This article looks at whether food always needs an accompanying sauce to be tasty, or if it can be just as delicious on its own.
Getting Saucy
In cooking, sauces are widely used in various recipes. If you are a fan of cookery television shows, it is almost impossible for a recipe to be made without an accompanying sauce being produced to go with it. On some shows, such as Masterchef, you even regularly see the contestants being chastised if they have put a dish together without making a sauce.
But is a sauce really necessary?
Needless Show
In the eyes of many, a sauce on a food represents unmistakable style but very little in the way of substance. There seems to almost be an obsession with how food looks, with the taste being something of an afterthought. I never thought that something that is intended to be eaten would turn into a marketing exercise, but such is the world we live in today.
A lot of the time, I do wonder why on Earth a sauce has been added to a dish. At least a lot of restaurants serve it separately, so you have the option of pouring it over your food or not. It can be more that a tad annoying if the first thing you have to do when served a meal is to clear off a sauce that you don’t want.
Of course, for everyone who holds that view of sauces, there are those who wouldn’t eat without them.
Sauces: A Must Have
In some cases, the sauce is something that is an absolute necessity to bringing something to life. A lasagne, or any pasta dish for that matter, simply would not be the same without a sauce; in fact, it would be called something else entirely.
In terms of other dishes, though, people believe that the sauce is the key to releasing flavours and making something a completely different proposition from what it would be ordinarily. Whether it is a peppercorn sauce over a steak, a cheese sauce over gammon, or a simple wine based sauce that is used for cooking a recipe itself, there are many unique flavours that can be developed when working with sauces.
In that point, we perhaps find the best thing about sauces within recipes.
Playing Around
If you happen to like using sauces in your own cooking, then you can have great fun in creating your own. Make them thicker, thinner, add different flavours or spices as you wish, and come up with new and unique ways to bring your recipes to life.
One of the world’s leading video websites, Videojug offers free instructional food recipes which include making the perfect cheese sauce.