Tuesday, April 1, 2008

How to fix sauces that 'break'

A while back, we had problems with a sauce 'breaking' and kind of had to fudge the results. I've just learned what to do when your sauce breaks, so I thought I'd post it here.  This is from Apartment Therapy - The Kitchen blog.

If your sauce is just starting to break, little droplets of fat will start to form around the edges of the bowl. When you see this, hold off adding more fat for the moment and add a little liquid instead. Use a teaspoon or two of whatever liquid you've used as a base (like water, wine, vinegar) and whisk vigorously.  The sauce should tighten up in a few seconds and the fat droplets will get suspended back into the emulsion. If the sauce isn't thick enough yet, you can pick back up with adding the fat one teaspoon at a time.

If your sauce has broken completely, the fat and liquid have separated and the sauce will look grainy and thin.  To save this one, you need to take a few extra steps.  In a separate bowl, whisk together one egg yolk and a teaspoon of whatever liquid you've been using as a base. Whisking constantly, add the broken sauce to this egg yolk one teaspoon at a time. This will form a fresh emulsion and a new stable sauce.  If you're making a warm sauce and the eggs start to cook, unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to save it. If you're down to your last egg or stick of butter, you can strain out the curdled egg and begin a new sauce using a fresh egg and the old sauce as we describe above. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Another trick that I've heard that works is to start over from the beginning to make the same sauce, and then once you've brought the new sauce together successfully, slowly combine the two sauces, again by using the Bride's method of adding the broken sauce to the newer sauce. This is especially supposed to work with mayonaise, and so I would suspect it would also work with related sauces as well. The only problem of course is that you then end up with more sauce then you wanted, which can be a problem sometimes.

Mister Invisible