Shadowing Practice: How to Make the 5 French Mother Sauces - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

So today we're going to be going over the classic French mother sauces,

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So today we're going to be going over the classic French mother sauces,

of which there are five.

Bechamel, velouté, tomato, hollandaise, and sauce espagnol.

And these are my exams for my first semester of culinary school,

and these sauces are on every single one of these things.

So these are pretty important on your journey to becoming a chef.

And we're going to go over the components of each one of these,

how to prepare each one,

how modern versions differ from classic versions,

and the practicality for home cooks today.

So we've got quite a bit going on in this video,

so what do you say we get to it?

Okay, getting started at their very base level,

mother sauces are a liquid plus a thickening agent.

And the most common thickening agent used is roux,

which is equal parts by weight, fat, and flour.

And there are two ways to incorporate this with a liquid,

and I will be demonstrating both of these within this video.

Other common thickening agents are cornstarch,

egg yolks, and just reducing the sauce down to thicken it up.

So let's jump right into it with Bechamel sauce,

which is the easiest of the five mother sauces.

It is milk plus white roux as the thickener.

It's named after Luis de Bechamel,

who is the steward to King Louis XIV.

So let's go ahead and jump into the kitchen and make this thing.

Okay, to make this sauce start with one tablespoon of butter,

and once it melts, add one half ounce of all-purpose flour,

and we're going to briefly cook this mixture only for about a minute.

You just want to lightly toast it here.

You don't want to develop any color.

And once you've reached that point,

you can start working in one cup of milk

and you want to do this gradually forming a paste initially

adding it little by little whisking constantly to work out

and prevent any lumps from forming

and once you have all the milk incorporated add a pinch

of salt along with a small piece of onion one bay leaf one clove

and a pinch of nutmeg these are optional

but they are common flavoring components used when making white sauces

and once you have everything added to the pot the sauce

has to be brought to a boil for the roux to fully thicken the sauce

and make sure to stir the sauce frequently to prevent the sauce from scorching on the bottom.

After reaching a boil, simmer the sauce for 10 to 15 minutes to cook off any raw flour taste,

and it should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon like you see here.

Well, there you have it.

Strain it out, and you have a classic bechamel sauce.

And a couple of examples of smaller sauces that come from this would be sous-bise sauce,

which is this plus diced onions,

and also Mornay sauce, which is a term that's kind of thrown around to describe any cheese sauce.

but traditionally it's made with gruyere and parmesan cheese.

Now as far as modern versions of this sauce goes,

you do still encounter this in professional kitchens,

but a lot of chefs also like to just reduce down cream and use that for their white sauce base.

Now the most common way that home cooks are going to encounter this sauce is

when they're looking for macaroni and cheese recipes online,

as most of these recipes online do use bechamel sauce as a base where you add cheese

and pasta to it and you have your macaroni and cheese.

And I think another great use of bechamel sauce is using it for the cheese sauce base for lasagna.

Okay, moving right into the next one,

we've got velouté sauce, which is a white or a simple stock plus a white or blonde roux to thicken it up.

And the term translates to velvety,

which refers to the color and consistency of the sauce.

And the name of the sauce is based on the stock you use.

So if you use fish stock,

it's fish velouté, or chicken velouté,

or veal velouté, and so on.

So let's jump back into the kitchen,

and let's make this sauce.

Okay, to make velouté sauce,

start by melting one tablespoon of butter,

and to that we're gonna add two ounces of mirepoix,

and we're gonna briefly cook this mixture to soften it up.

Then we're gonna add one half ounce of all-purpose flour to form a roux.

And for this sauce,

we're gonna cook this roux for a few minutes until the pale color slightly darkens into a blonde roux.

Then you can start working in one cup of stock.

I'm using chicken stock here,

and again, it's important to gradually work it in to prevent lumps from forming.

And for the flavoring components here,

add a few sprigs of thyme,

two to three parsley stems,

one bay leaf, and of course, a pinch of salt.

And just as with the bechamel sauce,

bring the sauce to a full boil before reducing the heat

and simmering for 10 to 15 minutes cook off any raw flour taste.

And when you're finished up,

check the consistency by making sure that it can coat the back of a spoon.

And it looks like we're good to go.

Well there you have it.

Strain it out and you've got a classic velouté sauce.

And traditionally this was used to make two smaller sauces.

One of them being sauce Alamand,

which is this, plus a liaison,

which is a mixture of heavy cream and egg yolks.

And the other one being sauce Supreme,

which is velouté sauce plus a little bit of cream,

lemon juice, and sometimes mushrooms.

Now in the modern kitchen,

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you're not likely to encounter sauce velouté,

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and you're even less likely to come across sauce alamandre supreme sauce.

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Most chefs prefer reducing stocks into glazes these days to use for their sauce bases.

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Now this is being used in the modern kitchen in the production of soups,

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especially cream soups, but chefs aren't usually just making velouté sauce and keeping it around for when they wanna make soups.

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Rather, it's sort of built in as they go,

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where you'd have your roux,

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your stock, and your main ingredient and put that together and essentially you would have a volute-based soup.

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Now as far as the home cook is concerned,

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the soup base is probably gonna be the most practical use of this sauce.

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But also, if you want a quick,

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cheap chicken gravy, maybe brown some of the vegetables first and add some black pepper,

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and you'll have a pretty good gravy.

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Okay, next up we've got hollandaise sauce,

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which is butter plus egg yolks as the thickener.

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And you can use either whole butter or clarified butter for this.

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Traditionally, it's clarified butter, and they will have different results.

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Whole butter might be a little bit richer and have a better flavor,

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but it also might be a little bit thinner due to the water content.

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And if you've ever made mayonnaise,

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you'll notice the ingredients are similar,

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except for oil is used in place of butter for mayonnaise.

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So this is basically hot mayonnaise.

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So let's go ahead and head on into the kitchen,

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and let's make this sauce.

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Alright for hollandaise sauce, start with two tablespoons each of white wine and white wine vinegar,

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and to that add three to four cracked peppercorns and one diced shallot,

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and reduce this mixture down until it is nearly dry like you see here.

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Add one tablespoon of water back to the mixture before straining it into another pan

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and once it cools slightly add two egg yolks to the pan.

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And this is the part of the recipe where you have to be careful with the heat.

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You don't want to scramble the eggs so it's important to whisk constantly

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while going back and forth on and off the burner.

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And what you're looking for here is for the eggs to turn pale and roughly triple in volume like you see here.

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And then we can start working on our melted butter.

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And you want to start with just a few drops to slowly form the emulsion.

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The temperature of the butter here is also very important.

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It should be around 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

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And if it's any higher than that,

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you're risking scrambling the eggs and you'd ruin the batch and have to start the whole thing over.

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And while incorporating the butter,

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if the mixture is becoming too thick and difficult to whisk,

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add a little bit of water to thin it back out.

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This problem exists more if you're using clarified butter than with whole butter which has water in it.

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And for the flavoring components here,

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add the juice from half a lemon,

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a pinch of salt, and a small dash of cayenne pepper.

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And once you have all that stuff added,

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give everything a good whisking,

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and once again, we're going to check the consistency by seeing how well it coats the back of a spoon.

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And looking at this one,

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this one's good to go.

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Well, there you have it.

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That's how you make hollandaise sauce.

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And you are going to run into this one quite a bit in modern kitchens.

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Most commonly with eggs benedict or food such as a steak served oscar style

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which is topped with crab meat asparagus and of course hollandaise sauce

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and of course the most common small sauce that's derived from hollandaise sauce is bernese sauce

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which is hollandaise plus sherville and or tarragon.

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Okay moving on we've got tomato sauce and this is somewhat complicated because classic versions differ quite a bit from modern versions.

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The classic version was tomato plus stock and an optional brown roux and they sometimes even contain salt pork,

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roasted pork bones, or ham bones.

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And modern versions really don't contain any of that stuff

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and the one I'm going to make today doesn't contain any of that either.

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But when I was going to culinary school and the exam questions came up,

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this was the answer that was expected.

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But for now though, let's go into the kitchen and let's make tomato sauce.

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For the tomato sauce, place a small sauce pot over a burner set between medium and high.

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Add a tablespoon of olive oil along with two to three ounces of a medium diced onion

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and pinch of salt and you want to cook the onion until it browns slightly around the edges.

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It should look something like what you see here and then we're going to add 2-3 garlic cloves that have been minced,

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cook that for another minute or two and then we can work in roughly 1 tablespoon of tomato paste.

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And I know I've mentioned this before but tomato paste out of a tube is the superior form of tomato paste.

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Cook that until a little bit of browning develops at the bottom of the pan

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and add one can of tomato puree or diced tomatoes along with a pinch of salt.

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And all that's left to do for this one is to

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bring it up to a simmer for a few minutes and then you're set.

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This is the easiest one of the five mother sauces to make.

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Well, there you have it.

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That's a pretty quick and easy tomato sauce base that can be taken in all sorts of directions,

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and you can blend it together as much or as little as you would like.

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Now, the practicality of having this sauce base around sort of depends on you.

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If you do like to make a whole bunch of different types of tomato sauces,

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maybe having this base stored in Tupperwares in your freezer isn't a bad idea.

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For example, add some basil and oregano,

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fresh or dried, and you've got a pretty good pasta sauce or pizza sauce base there.

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You could also add some fennel,

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thyme, and fish stock, and you have a base for seafood cioppino.

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Or you could add olives,

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capers, and anchovies, and you've got puttanesca sauce.

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And last but not least,

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we have sauce espagnol, or brown sauce,

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which is brown stock plus brown roux as the thickening agent

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and I've already taken the time to make the brown rue

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which is a very time-consuming process

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and you have to be very careful as you're making it

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because you don't want to scorch it you want to make sure you cook it evenly

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and it's also extremely hot it's not called Cajun napalm for nothing

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so with that let's go ahead and head on into the kitchen

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and let's make this sauce for this one start with 1 tablespoon of butter

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and once it melts add 2 ounces of mirepoix

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but this time we're gonna cook it until it caramelizes a bit like you see here.

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Then work in one tablespoon of tomato paste

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and same thing here allow the bottom of the pan to take on a little bit of color.

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Add eight ounces of brown stock along with a few sprigs of thyme,

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two to three parsley stems,

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one bay leaf, and a pinch of salt.

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And while that heats up let's go over brown roux.

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There are a lot of YouTube channels out there that don't prepare this correctly.

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This here is not brown roux and neither is this.

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This is brown roux.

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Making brown roux is a time-consuming process and not following through properly will result in a weak pale sauce.

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Alright to incorporate this sauce together work the roux in

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when the stock reaches a boil

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and the most important thing here is to make sure the roux has cooled slightly to prevent it from splattering

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and causing burns.

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And once again make sure to keep the whisk moving

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while working in the roux and bring the sauce to a boil

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and simmer it for 10 to 15 minutes like you did the others

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and check the consistency by seeing how well it coats the back of a spoon.

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Well there you have it.

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Strain it out and you've got sauce espagnol and this is most commonly used to make demi-gloss,

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which is a 50-50 mixture of this sauce and brown stock that is then reduced by half.

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So you're not very likely to come across traditional demi-gloss in modern kitchens.

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And the reason for that is pretty obvious,

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and that's the practicality of it.

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It takes a long time to make brown stock and a long time to make espagnol sauce,

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and then to take that even further and to combine the two and reduce that.

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It's just not very practical.

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Rather, they're using bases like this one from More Than Gourmet.

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This is just a small container,

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usually they have big buckets like this,

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but that's usually what they're using.

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And if you wanted to make this at home,

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I would suggest a much quicker version,

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which is to omit the brown roux and just use cornstarch or arrowroot,

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and that's going to make what's called fondlier or joulier.

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Now this sauce does have a lot of practical uses,

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as virtually every brown sauce is derived from this,

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and the family tree of this sauce is the largest of all of the mother sauces.

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For example, Chasseur sauce is brown sauce plus mushrooms, shallots, and white wine.

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And Bordelais sauce contains shallots,

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red wine, and it's garnished with diced bone marrow.

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And another one I've featured on this channel is Merchant of Vin sauce,

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or wine merchant sauce, which is brown sauce plus red wine.

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I'll link that video in the description if you want to go check it out,

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but be aware that is one of my early videos,

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so the editing sucks, the audio sucks,

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and the camera's a little bit out of focus at the beginning of the video.

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the recipe is good, so bear with me on that.

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Okay, to summarize this whole thing up,

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the five French mother sauces are Bechamel,

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Vellute, Hollandaise, Tomato, and Sauce Espanol.

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And I will include the recipes for all five of these that I made today in the description of the video.

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But for now, that's the end of the video,

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so thanks for tuning in,

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and we'll see you next time.

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Shadowing Practice: How to Make the 5 French Mother Sauces - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: How to Make the 5 French Mother Sauces - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

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What is the Shadowing Technique?