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SCENE 1
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| AB: Hi, Thing! Nice looking steaks you got going there. You’re
cooking those in a little butter, I can see. Very continental.
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Go to www.foodtv.com for complete recipe. |
| AB: Um, how’re you planning on
finishing those? THING: [retreats and brings up a bottle of steak sauce] Ah, yes, B2 steak sauce. Nothing else like it. Nothing edible, at least. |
B.2. |
AB: Look, I’ll tell you what, Thing, we’ll put this away and, I’ll tell you what.
You just give me ten minutes and I’ll make you a steak sauce so good that it will your head spin.
T: [goes limp, dejected]
AB: Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it. Um, here. [hands T the steak sauce] And I’ll even take care
of the steaks, okay? Okay.
Lip smacking, though they may be, molecule for molecule, these steaks are not
the tastiest things in this scene.
These are. [brings a magnifying glass down onto the pan after the steaks have
been removed] Those little brown bits in there are what the French called fond or
foundation and from them, a mighty pan sauce can be built.
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Step one: we must dissolve these bits or deglaze them with a water-type liquid. Now, water definitely qualifies as a water-type liquid, but it doesn’t bring a lot of flavor to the party. Which is one reason, I always keep beef and chicken broth on hand. Yes, the packaged stuff. By the way, this is broth, not stock, okay? Stock is made from bones; this is made from meat. Three quarters of a cup should do the trick. |
3/4 Cup Beef Broth
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As the liquid boils, scrape with a whisk or a wooden spoon to break those brown
bits off the bottom of the pan so that they can dissolve.
Now we’re going to let this reduce, still over high heat, for a couple of minutes.
Why? Well, as water leaves the party, the concentration of flavor elements, and
lip smacking gelatin are concentrated. So we’re going to hold off until
the end to season. Remember that. If you salt now, it’s going to be too salty
later.
The words sauce and salsa both come from the Latin word for salt - 'sal'.
By dissolving the fond and reducing this broth, we've got the start of a good
sauce here, but we’ve got miles to go before we eat. The next addition, a
flavorful aromatic liquid. Now, there are possibilities a plenty. But I really
like alcohol for this, for this simple reason: you can add a very little amount
and get a whole lot of flavor, which is good, for a reduction sauce.
Now, when it comes to beef, I don’t think that there’s anything better than
cognac, and I’m going to add three tablespoons before I let it reduce further.
And here’s an important thing to note: when you’re cooking with alcohol,
remember, you can cook out some of the alcohol, but you can never cook out all
of the alcohol.
Now, I don’t think Thing’s going to be out driving tonight, but it’s just a good
thing to keep in mind.
Also, I want to add another layer of flavor in the form of green peppercorns.
They look a lot like capers, but they’re not. They are packed in brine though.
And to carry the flavor, and also add more volume and body, we’re going to go
with three quarters of a cup of cream.
Now, that’s starting to sound like sauce!
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Cognac, and green peppercorns and the cream. There. Now there’s nothing to do but allow this to cook down to the correct consistency. |
3 Tbs. Cognac 3 tsp. Green Peppercorns, Drained & Slightly Crushed 3/4 Cup Heavy Cream |
See, as water leaves the pan,
the fat and remaining solids come closer and closer together, thus thickening,
until the sauce reaches this stage. That’s called nappe.
[tastes]
Perfect! But too strong to eat by itself but that’s exactly what you want.
Otherwise, it would be soup. Which is not to say that you can’t turn sauces into
soups, but that’s another show.
Time to plate.
THING & THING'S DATE: [dining on the steaks and
sauces]
Ah, leave it to a rich creamy pan sauce to turn an everyday hunk of cow into date food.
AB:
You kids enjoy, y’hear?
THING & THINGS DATE: [toss their spoons aside, become all touchy feely and slowly sink
beneath the table]
So, what are some other ways that sauce science can come to your rescue? Let’s go find out.
Steak served with a pepper sauce is known in France as Steak Au Poivre.
[passes a pot on the stove and looks in]
What’s this? Looks like someone’s trying to make a stew. A lamb stew, which of
course, is composed of small bits of
browned lamb and vegetation, suspended in a
brown sauce.
Hmm. This looks a little on the watery side if you ask me. Sounds like a job
for starch!
AB: [is "thrown" on stage in a sunflower suit, recites as a grade-schooler to no one in particular] Plants manufacture sugar in their leaves, via photosynthesis. They store this sugar in the form of tight little granules called starch. [extracts a knife and cuts the suit through the stomach, granules fall out]
Now, when exposed to heat and liquid, these little granules gelatinize or open up. When they open up, they tangle, thus thickening any liquid they happen to be in. The trick in doing this is knowing that different kinds of starch thicken in different ways.
AB: [to no one in particular, obviously embarrassed] Can I go now? Okay.
GUEST: Deb Duchon, Nutritional Anthropologist
Here in America, wheat flour is the most common thickener. But it’s got several
disadvantages: clumps, worse than any other starch, combined with fat to make a
really greasy sauce, and it's got to be brought to a full boil before it will
thoroughly thicken. And it's got protein in it, which just rise to the surface
and you got to remove the scum and ... yuck. It's nasty, nasty business.
Now, Asian cuisines often employ cornstarch, a far purer starch than
wheat flour. It thickens at lower temperatures than flour, but it isn’t very
heat stable. If you overcook it even a little bit, you’ll end up right back
where you started from.
Now, tapioca or cassava starch is good for pie fillings but very tricky to
handle in sauces.
Hmm. Potato starch works a lot like cornstarch and it's unique among granular
starches in that it is kosher for Passover.
But my very, very favorite all time thickener has got to be arrowroot, which
comes from, of course, arrowroots.
DEB
DUCHON: Not necessarily.
Did you hear somebody call for a Nutritional Anthropologist because I know I didn’t call for a Nutritional Anthropologist?
DD: Well, we N.A.s have to shop, too. But Alton, you’re really in over your head
with this arrowroot thing.
AB: I am?
DD: Yes, you are! Well, what they sell as arrowroot fodder isn’t always necessarily from the true arrowroot, Latin name: Maranta arundinacea.
AB: Ah. Easy for you to say.
DD: It’s often actually tapioca or cassava or even potato starch that’s sold as arrowroot starch.
So you have to be sure that you have a reliable source.
AB: You know, uh, [looks around] I hate to admit this but I probably wouldn’t know an arrowroot
if you hit me over the head with one.
DD: Oh, well, they have them here.
AB: Oh! It’s a tubar! Or is it a taproot? Or a swollen stem? I’m not sure.
DD: I’ll bet you don’t even know why it’s called “arrowroot.”
AB: I don’t know why this is called “arrowroot?” Of course I do! Because when I
hold it like this, it looks like … [gives up] No, I don’t.
DD: It was first found by the Indians who lived in the Caribbean, and they found that they could make a paste out of it that they could put on a wound that had
been made by a poison arrow and it would pull the poison out. Hence “arrowroot.”
Just another reason to keep this stuff at home at all times.
AB: So how do you
like yours?
DD: Oh, I don’t use it.
AB: Oh.
DD: I use Japanese arrowroot. It’s made from the Kudzu plant.
AB: Kudzu? Excellent! Well, that will probably have to wait for
another show. Thanks a lot, Deb.
[incredulous] Kudzu!
Now that we have our starch of choice in hand, we’ve got to ask ourselves two questions. Number one: how much of this stuff do we actually need? Now, I figure we’ve got about a quart of liquid here. And if I wanted to tighten that up to a real gravy consistency, I’d probably go with a tablespoon of arrowroot for every cup of liquid. But I really want to tighten this up a bit, so I’m going to go with two tablespoons of arrowroot.
Here we go. Tablespoon one ... [stops before putting it in] Oh. Of course this brings us to our second
question: how do we introduce this into here [liquid]? Now, we can’t just dump
this in, right? Why? Because!
If we did, some of the starch would gelatinize, immediately forming a watertight
seal around other non-gelatinized starches. In other words, it would make big
nasty lumps.
So, these granules must be dispersed in a cold water-type liquid, before meeting
the heat. But again, water won’t bring any flavor to the party, so why use it if
you don’t have to?
Now, I tasted this stew, and trust me, it can use a little brightening. And for
that, I usually go with wine. But arrowroot thickens so fast, that I don’t think
there would be time to cook that raw alcohol flavor out of the sauce. So, I’m
going to use tomato juice instead, one cup.
Now, arrowroot is unique in that it thickens just as well in acidic liquids as
not. And the only thing that I wouldn’t suggest thickening with arrowroot is
dairy. They get together—milk and arrowroot—and they make this kind of slimy
nasty thing. So if you’ve got to do a dairy based pie thing, stick with
cornstarch.
There we go.
Now, this, we stir in and just leave the heat on medium. This is going to
thicken very quickly. That’s because, unlike wheat flour which doesn’t
gelatinize until it reaches a full boil, arrowroot will gelatinize at well under
a simmer. So once all those starches pop open, they’ll start tangling up with
each other, forming a net that will capture and therefore thicken liquid.
A minute of stirring later, and look! what was once watery is now like a velvet
robe of goodness draping gently across our little bits of meat.
Mmmm, now that’s what I call Good Eats! And good poetry too.
To prevent a skin from forming on a
savory
sauce, place plastic wrap lightly over the surface.
GUEST: Chef Paul, Sauce Instructor [this character is modeled after American Chopper star, Paul Teutul, Sr.]
When it comes to stand alone sauces, nothing rivals the hot emulsion that is
hollandaise. And few words instill such fear in the hearts of cooks. Why?
Because 
...
CHEF PAUL: Because you’re an idiot! [exits]
... hollandaise is, is really nothing but a hot mayonnaise made like a lemon
curd.
Here’s what you’re going to need hardware wise. 
You will need one large
saucepan with about an inch of water inside, okay? You will need a heavy
stainless steal mixing bowl that will fit down in the top of that saucepan in
such a way that the bottom of the bowl never comes anywhere close to the
water. It’s important, okay? You’re also going to need a nice big whisk.
Now, step one is to bring this water to a simmer.
CP: [enters and takes the pot away] I’ll do it! You’ll just take forever. [exits]
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Step two is to take three egg yolks, moistened with a teaspoon of water into the bowl there. Whisk! Now a sound thrashing is going to open up or denature some of the proteins in the eggs, making them more receptive to the other ingredients to come. |
3 Egg Yolks + 1 tsp. Water |
See, in their natural or raw state, proteins which are nothing more than long
chains of amino acids, are all wadded up on themselves and they’re held in that
shape by little molecular bonds. Now, when we beat the eggs or apply acid or
heat, they denature or open up. Those bonds let go so that they’re free to
connect with other proteins. That’s what coagulation is and we’re going to have
lots of it.
Adding a little bit of water are going to make the eggs less dense. And that’s
going to help mobilize the eggs’ natural emulsifiers which we are going to
need.
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Now add a measly quarter teaspoon of sugar and mix for another thirty seconds. |
1/4 tsp. Sugar |
CP: [from off-camera] Sugar?! You’re not making hollandaise! You’re making frosting, you freak!
Why the sugar? Because once dissolved, the sucrose molecules will nestle
down between all those proteins and that’ll buy us some curdling protection.
Now we’re ready to cook.
There. Whisk over the simmering water for three to five minutes or until the
eggs really thicken up and lighten in color a bit. Whatever you do, don’t stop
whisking, okay? You can slow down but don’t stop or the eggs will curdle. We’ve
got a little bit of protection from the sugar, but not that much.
When the yolks fall in a ribbon, like that, you know you are done. So, kill the
heat and remove the bowl from the pan.
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Now we’re ready to add the butter. We’ve got twelve tablespoons, that’s a stick and a half of unsalted butter chilled in cubes. So, just add a piece and whisk. |
12 Tbs. Unsalted Butter, Cubed & Chilled |
CP: [looking in the oven] I can’t believe how filthy you keep this place! And they let you on
television! [slams oven door and exits]
We want to slowly integrate the butter into the mixture. And by cooking with
just the residual heat here, we can do that. Now, as the butter melts, it turns
into tiny droplets, which are quickly wrapped up in emulsifiers like lecithin
and welcomed into the newly formed sauce.
Now as you may remember from our
mayonnaise episode, an emulsifier is a molecule
that can grab hold of fat with one end and water with the other and pull them
together and keep them together in what is called an emulsion.
However, this initiation takes time. If we just dumped that butter in all at
once, there would be too many unwrapped butter blobs and they would just pool
together and we’d have a grease slick, so ...
Oh, there’s not going to be enough heat here of course to melt all that butter,
so every now and then your going to have to come back over to the double boiler
and use this heat [from the water] to reload this heat [in the bowl].
CP: Just what do you think you’re doing, stupid?
This is, is Chef Paul. He was my sauce instructor at culinary school.
AB: I’m making hollandaise sauce, Chef.
CP: You call that hollandaise? You imbecile. [to the camera] This is always how it is with
him. Always has to do things his own way. Thinks he’s a genius. [back to AB] Moron’s more
like it. Everybody knows when you make hollandaise, you use clarified butter!
AB: Yeah, but here’s the thing, Chef. if I use whole butter, I can slowly
release the fat into the emulsion and that gives me more control!
CP: Control?! You want to see control? Look at me not killing you! [tastes
sauce and seems to like it] I’m going to my office for a blood pressure pill.
AB: Yes, Chef.
[obviously happy with himself] He’s really a sweet guy. He’s just a little insecure. He’s got some rage issues.
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When the last of the butter has melted, time to do a little seasoning. I like to go with half a teaspoon of kosher salt, two teaspoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. There we go. |
1/2 tsp. kosher salt, 2 tsp. fresh
freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper.
|
Now, what can this be served with? Well, gosh. What can’t it be served with?
Hollandaise is fantastic with eggs. It's great with spinach, just about any
whitefish you can think of ... um ... chocolate éclairs, blocks of cheese. Heck,
sometimes I just eat it with a spoon like soup. No, not … Yeah, I do.
You know, the trickiest part of sauce making isn’t actually the sauce making. It’s the sauce keeping. See, if you leave them around at room temperature even
for a few minutes, most starch-thickened sauces, as well as most reductions and anything containing gelatin, will turn, well, solid as a rock. With
the possible exception of certain purées, when you try to reheat most sauces,
well, they just fall apart into a grainy greasy mess. There is an answer though,
and it’s in the hands of construction workers everywhere.
Hollandaise was originally called
Sauce Isigny
after a town in Normandy know for its butter.
GUESTS: Construction Worker #1
Construction Worker #2
Although, they’re often considered lowbrow, wolf-whistling Neanderthals, if you
ask me, construction workers are geniuses. That’s because there’s not one on
earth that would be caught dead without his vacuum flask which were, of course, invented
in the late eighteenth century by English
physicist, James Dewar.
CONSTRUCTION WORKER #1: Hey, my bouillabaisse, it is as hot as that redhead down there!
[Catcalls]
CONSTRUCTION WORKER #2: My long island ice tea is as cold as a witch's ...
AB: Hey, hey! You guys want me to explain to you how a thermos can keep hot things hot and cold things cold?
CW1 & CW2: No.
AB: Okay, it has to do with heat transfer. Okay? There’s only three ways for
heat to really move. You’ve got direct contact, or conduction. You got air currents, which are called convection and then you’ve got waves, radiation. Now
a good 
thermos will stop all three, dead in their tracks. Hey, can I borrow this
for a sec? [attemps to take CW1's thermos] Just a sec. I'll give it back. [takes
it and pours contents out]
Ah, there we go. Okay, stand clear. [takes a small powered cutting tool and cuts
the thermos lengthwise in half] There. There, hold that, will you? [gives the
tool to CW1] Great!
Thanks.
[opens Thermos up to see cross section] Now, as you can see, the inner bottle is joined to the outer shell
only by a little bitty strip of metal. That keeps conduction to a minimum. The manufacturer removes the air in this cavity creating a vacuum. That limits
convection, right? Last but not least, the inner bottle is made either out of
either polished stainless steel or, better yet, silver glass, which simply
reflects the heat energy back inside the vessel.
CW1: So, how does it know what’s hot and what’s cold?
AB: Oh, it doesn’t know what’s hot or what’s cold. See, heat always moves from
areas of high heat to low heat. So, if you put something cold in here, it keeps
heat out, if you put something hot in there, it keeps heat in.
CW1: Okay, so if this thing is so great, smart guy, why can’t it keep things
hot ...
CW2: ... or cold ...
CW1: ... for fricking ever, huh?
AB: Well, that’s just because no man-made system is perfect, guys. I mean, look, see this little, this space right here [metal strip that connects the inner and
outer bottles] The heat can get out of conduction there.
Of course, there’s the cap itself. Every time you open it, you’re letting heat in or
out.
CW2: How can we enhance the performance of our thermos?
AB: Well, maybe not this one anymore. [hands the now split thermos back
to CW1] Here you go. But sure. You can prime your
thermos. You can, ... If you’re going to put a hot liquid in it, just pour in
some hot water and let it sit for a minute and dump it out and then put in your
sauce, soup or what have you. If you’re going to put something cold in there,
then you put in some ice water, let it sit in there for minute and then empty it and
go on about your business there. Sorry about ... Hey! what’s the best way for me to
get down?
CW2: You, you want to know the fast way?
Oh bother.
[pours sauce over what looks like Eggs
Benedict]
Mmm. Hollandaise. And look! [indicates his thermos] I’ve got plenty for later.
Well, I hope we’ve given
you the inspiration and confidence you need to give your meals the final coating
of goodness they so deserve, a sauce. We’ve only scratched the surface. Of
course, there are as many sauce possibilities out there as there are stars above
in that big galaxy that we like to call Good Eats.
See you next time.
Last Edited on 08/27/2010
[voice over] 1195 A.D.
Sophisticated medieval pallets favor sweets sauces that showcase the spice rack.
The more exotic cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves, mustard, honey, and of
course, exotic herbs, the better.
And of course, for thickening, there’s always plenty of stale bread to go
around. Perfect for an après joust dinner party.
[voice over] France, 1813.
When it comes to hittin' the sauce, nobody touches the great Antonin Carême,
who’s developed a system of sauces based on a handful of “mother” sauces: white
and brown sauces made from stock, béchamel for milk, tomato and hollandaise.
Upon this foundation, Carême believes that hundreds of small sauces can be
constructed. As for the father of sauces, well, Carême considers himself to be
the Father of all sauces.
[modern AB pops his head in the window of
Antonin's kitchen and climbs in]
Today, the average American gets his or her sauce from a bag or a box, which is
a real shame, because you don’t have to be a world-class chef to whip up
world-class sauces.
Armed with a couple of decent tools, a handful of basic ingredients, and a
quarter cup of know-how, and you too will be able to convert the liquid of your
choice into seriously …
[reading]
“A sauce is a flavorful and somewhat viscous liquid designed to be ladled,
spooned, brushed or squirted, onto an accompanying food. Although recipes
for over a thousand different sauces are on record, most stem from only a
few dozen different mass …" [gets slightly disgusted and closes dictionary]
