Posts Tagged ‘sauces’

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4 Reasons to Buy Cooking Sauce Online

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Stock your pantry from ours! When you buy cooking sauce online, you save time in the kitchen without sacrificing flavor. More Than Gourmet’s cooking sauces are available for vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike. Here are four reasons to visit our friendly online store:

1. Quality

More Than Gourmet’s sauces taste better than the other guy’s because they are hand-made by people who know their business. We take immense pride in following the French sauce tradition laid out by Master Chef Auguste Escoffier. Only the highest quality ingredients go into our lovingly crafted sauces. Simply check the label for ingredients – you’ll only find the best.

2. Convenience

Keep a supply of ready-made sauces on hand for times when you need a good meal in a hurry. A little sauce can transform a boring meal into a satisfying feast.  Ordering sauce online allows you to keep your pantry stocked with high quality meal-starters, and our sauces are shipped directly to your door.  If you need some meal ideas, we have plenty of suggestions and recipes ready for you at our web site, with just a click or two.

3. Selection

All 27 of our products are available for purchase at our online store.  From imported Hollandaise to classic demi-glace, to white wine sauce, to mushroom essence, it’s all there for you.  Need something a little out of the ordinary like venison stock or duck stock?  How about gluten-free or vegetarian sauces?  We have those, too.  It’s our pantry, but it’s stocked for you, with products for all occasions, dietary lifestyles, and cooking skills.

4. Cost Savings

Our online store is the place to find great deals.  We offer several discounted packs of multiple products to help you save while stocking up.  We also offer frequent specials at our Sauce Deals page, and there’s always free shipping on orders over $50.  Stock your pantry from ours and experience the best sauces online!

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Posted in The Sauce Guys

4 Vegetarian Sauce Recipes

Friday, April 5th, 2013

It’s easier than ever to eat vegetarian when you stock your pantry with More Than Gourmet’s vegan-certified sauces and stocks!  Our Reduced Vegetable Stock, Mushroom Essence,  and Roasted Vegetable Demi-Glace are full of flavor and can play a key role in any number of delicious, vegetable-based dishes.  You don’t need to be a vegetarian to go meatless a few times a week. Try out these 4 great vegetarian sauce recipes, which are sure to become staples on your home menu.

Pasta is an excellent foundation for a satisfying meal. Our Basil Sauce for Pasta is made with a generous handful of fresh basil, cream, sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan, and our Reduced Vegetable Stock for depth of flavor.  Toss some freshly cooked pasta, and perhaps some roasted veggies with this luscious sauce, and you’ll get raves from those around your dinner table.

Mushrooms are another favorite of vegetarians and meat lovers alike.  Our savory Mushroom Gravy works well with pasta or steamed potatoes as part of a quick lunch or supper.  It can also be drizzled over a sautéed, roasted, or grilled vegetable medley and a starch of your choice for a more complex meal. White wine and our Mushroom Essence bring out the flavor of your favorite mushrooms in this delicate, earthy, and versatile sauce.

Interested in something simple?  Our Roasted Red Pepper Sauce fills the bill.  Just whirl some sautéed onion and garlic with roasted red peppers and our vegetable stock in a blender.  Simmer it with a sprinkling of smoked paprika and a dash of sherry vinegar to add a bit of piquant flavor to the gorgeous red color of this sauce.  It’s delicious with any vegetable dish, beans, whole grains, and pasta.

For an Asian-inspired meal, try some Spicy Ginger Garlic Sauce!  Made with our Roasted Vegetable Demi-Glace as a base, this aromatic sauce fills your kitchen with the tantalizing smell of ginger and curry. It goes beautifully with a selection of Asian vegetables, rice, or Asian noodles.  Our versatile vegetarian demi-glace can also be used to make a variety of other tasty vegetarian sauces like Mediterranean Mushroom and Olive Sauce and classic Red Wine Peppercorn Sauce.

Any of these vegetarian sauce recipes could be used for meat, poultry, or seafood dishes, as well. The choice is yours, but it’s most important to have fun with it and enjoy the meal you create.  Vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore—let More Than Gourmet enhance your cooking experience with our expertly made sauce bases and stocks.

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Posted in Tips and Techniques

Essential Flavors for Gourmet Home Cooking

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Dining in can prove just as special as going out. Whether you are cooking for yourself or for someone special to you, the effort of cooking lends its own flavor to the meal. From a quick weeknight meal to the special occasion dinner, gourmet home cooking means adding flavor, enhancing flavor, or just bringing out the naturally great flavor of good food.  And it’s not that hard to do.  A simple step or two during, before, or after cooking can take a dish from OK to amazing. Here’s a little information on essential flavors that will make your home-cooked meals stand out!

Perhaps the most important thing good cooks know is how to season food.  It’s a small thing with big results: the difference between a bland, unsatisfying dish that you eat out of necessity and a delicious, wonderfully nuanced experience is often just salt and pepper. Seasoning is a key way to build flavor.  Whether you’re making chicken soup, mashed potatoes, a roasted beef tenderloin, or sautéed snap peas, a sprinkle of salt and pepper early in the cooking process, and then again near the end will make the flavors dance in your mouth.

In addition to salt and pepper, traditional French cooking includes grated nutmeg and cayenne on the list of standard seasonings. The nutmeg and cayenne are added in small quantities, and they give a subtle, tasty complexity to soups, sauces, and vegetable and meat dishes. (Ground allspice is substituted for the nutmeg with beef and lamb.) Try adding a little nutmeg and cayenne to your next batch of mashed potatoes and see what you think.

After cooking, you can ramp up the flavor of your food by adding a sauce, and More Than Gourmet has you covered there.  We offer a line of superb ready-to-use sauces imported from France, our delicious red and white wine sauces, plus four classic demi-glaces.  All are excellent on their own and easy to prepare—or you can embellish them as you like.  Gourmet home cooking has never been so simple. Seasoning, a little fat, and a great sauce are the flavor essentials that will enhance almost any dish you prepare. Shop our pantry for more inspiration!

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Posted in Tips and Techniques

French Demi-Glace vs. Vegetable Demi-Glace

Saturday, March 30th, 2013

More Than Gourmet provides a variety of sauces for your kitchen, whatever your cooking style. Our sauces star in many dishes, from the rushed weeknight dinner to labors of love. Vegetable demi-glace is a great sauce for omnivores looking to cook leaner as well as vegetarians seeking more flavor in their meals.  The recipe for traditional French demi-glace requires meat as an ingredient. Our Veggie-Glace Gold roasted vegetable demi-glace is a true vegetarian substitute that brings a new level of taste and flexibility to your kitchen.

The difference between traditional French demi-glace and vegetarian demi-glace lies most obviously in the exclusion of meat. More Than Gourmet follows the sauce tradition of Master Chef Escoffier in making our classic French Demi-Glace. We combine a veal and beef stock with Sauce Espagnole and gently reduce it for 30 hours. This process creates a sauce with robust flavor that omnivores can enjoy in many different dishes.

Our Veggie-Glace Gold is made in the French style from the finest and freshest ingredients without chemicals, MSG, fillers, preservatives, or artificial flavors or coloring, and it’s Certified Vegan by the American Vegetarian Association.  It offers the flavor, complexity, and sheen of a traditional demi-glace without the meat.  Vegetable demi-glace is possibly the best tool you can have in your pantry for light, vegetarian, or vegan cooking.

With our vegetable demi-glace, you can make Red Wine Peppercorn Sauce as a spicy, flavorful complement to grilled mushrooms or roasted potatoes and a variety of vegetarian main courses.  This great sauce is only one option for delicious vegetarian French cooking—check out our vegetarian recipes.  With our Veggie-Glace Gold, you can prepare healthy vegetarian or vegan French dishes that are truly more than gourmet!

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Posted in The Sauce Guys

Lemon Dill Sauce: Tartar for Adults

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

For many of us, fish sticks with tartar sauce are as nostalgic as peanut butter and jelly or that bright yellow-orange mac and cheese—foods from childhood.  Tartar sauce, a simple combo of mayo and pickle relish, has graced many a plate of kid-friendly fish, but grownup seafood eaters tend to fall into two camps: those who still like their tartar sauce and those who have moved on in search of something with more flair and flavor.  No matter which camp you’re in, More Than Gourmet’s creamy lemon dill sauce, with its elegant blend of citrus and herbal flavors, could become your favorite sauce for seafood.  Think of it as tartar sauce for adults.

Equally as tasty and creamy hot or cold, our lemon dill sauce will make fried, grilled, broiled, steamed or baked fish taste sublime.  This sauce also can do much more than dress up seafood. It’s great as a sandwich spread and salad dressing when a cold dish is in order.  Lemon dill sauce adds a hint of French flavor to quiches, potato salads, and even simply steamed vegetables.  Try it with chicken for turkey, or stir some into plain rice or pasta for a delicious difference.

Our pre-made lemon dill sauce is crafted by an accomplished chef and imported from France. The easy-to-heat pouches contain an impossibly buttery sauce with the fresh flavor of dill and tangy citrus notes. We promise an excellence rarely found with pre-made sauces.  Our lemon dill sauce is not just “good enough,” it’s as delicious as if your personal chef prepared it just for you in your home kitchen.  Give it a try.  You may never go back to tartar sauce.

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Posted in The Sauce Guys

How Gourmet Sauces Can Transform Everyday Cooking

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

A busy lifestyle can leave very little time for cooking, but that doesn’t mean you have to dine simply every night! Gourmet sauces transform your everyday cooking into restaurant quality fare in the comfort of your own kitchen. Sauce crafting is an art, and not everyone has the time to devote to preparing a truly amazing sauce. More Than Gourmet’s ready-to-use sauces are imported from France, and they contain only the best ingredients to add flair to even the simplest selection on your menu for everyday cooking.

One-pot meals are the dining staple for those in a rush. Gourmet sauces can turn your simple sauté of seasonal vegetables from a hurried affair to a delightful meal. Grains, pasta, and root vegetables require very little prep work to form the base of a filling and quick dinner. Add some sauce to spice up these quick and filling meals! A creamy Hollandaise Sauce goes beautifully with steamed asparagus, and a rich Roquefort Sauce has the potential to make you change any ideas you may have about vegetables being only a side dish.

Gourmet sauces also dress up meat, fish, and poultry. For the cook in a rush, high quality filets of beef, pork, or fish or boneless chicken breasts or thighs can be quickly cooked by grilling, pan-searing, or baking. Ready-to-use gourmet sauces significantly reduce the prep time required for these types of meals. When you’re in a hurry to get dinner on the table, you need only concern yourself with which method of preparation suits your time constraints and cravings. The sauce provides the perfect flavors–spices, herbs, succulent cheeses, or perhaps a hint of wine–to round out your main dish. Our Bernaise Sauce is just right with red meats and mushrooms, and our Dijon Mustard Wine Sauce transforms simply prepared fish or chicken breasts into a luxurious meal to remember.

More Than Gourmet’s pantry includes five ready-to-use French gourmet sauces, which are sure to transform your everyday cooking. Each is made by hand with only natural ingredients for the best possible flavor. From simple potatoes to a high quality steak, these sauces will take your everyday cooking to new heights of flavor without taking up a large chunk of time!

Right now, we’re offering 20% of on all of our ready-to-use French sauces.  Check it out on our Sauce Deals page.

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Posted in The Sauce Guys, Tips and Techniques

Impromptu

Friday, January 18th, 2013

It was getting late in the afternoon, and I needed a sauce for a weekend dinner—something delicious that wasn’t too much trouble to make, something with just a few ingredients I already had on hand, but good enough to dress up the plain baked chicken I was serving.  I thought back to a wonderful sauce I learned to make early in cooking school.  It was a simple cream sauce made with shrimp shells, shallots, wine, stock, and cream, a classic reduction sauce, luxuriously creamy and filled with flavor from concentrating the ingredients as the sauce cooked.  It occurred to me that I could use this basic technique, plus ingredients from my frig and pantry, to make a perfect sauce for my chicken.

Starting a with some roasted garlic cloves I had on hand, I chopped them roughly and then mashed them with the blade of my chef’s knife.  I melted some butter in a saucepan, added the garlic along with a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary, and cooked them together for a few minutes to create the beginning of the flavor base for my sauce.  I poured in some white wine, turned the heat up, and let the wine boil until it was reduced by about three-fourths.  Next I added a generous pour of cream and some MTG roasted chicken glace (Glace de Poulet Gold) for a nice, deep chicken flavor.

After whisking until the glace dissolved, I adjusted the heat so the so the sauce was just at a simmer, and let it cook until it reduced and thickened a bit.  (These types of sauces are best left a little more liquid and less thick.  If cream is reduced too much, it gets thick and gloppy and eventually breaks.)  Then I strained the sauce to remove the rosemary and large chunks of garlic, returned the sauce to the pan, and seasoned it in the classic French way with salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne (just a whisper of the last two—they enhance flavor in a magically subtle way).

I ladled that sauce over slices of baked chicken that I had fanned across warm plates and garnished it all with sprigs of fresh rosemary.  My guests were very happy and so was I.  The best part of the experience, besides eating the chicken, was revisiting the technique for making that sauce.  It could be varied almost endlessly, with different aromatics substituted for the garlic (raw shallots, or onion), different herbs substituted for the rosemary, and different glaces substituted for the Glace de Poulet (shellfish, beef, or vegetable), to make the perfect sauce for many dishes.

Even though the spirit of moderation suggests that I can’t have a rich cream sauce for dinner every night, it’s great to have this sauce in my repertoire for the occasional treat on a busy weekend.  Here’s the recipe: Rosemary Garlic Cream Sauce.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

What is Demi-Glace Sauce?

Friday, November 9th, 2012

What is demi-glace sauce? How is it made, and how do you use it in your kitchen?  Demi-glace is a French cooking classic with excellent flavor and texture, and it’s essential in the kitchen of anyone who enjoys making great sauces. Master Chef Auguste Escoffier penned the original recipe, and More Than Gourmet follows his instructions to prepare the highest quality sauce for use in your kitchen.

Demi-glace is a reduced mixture of two different French sauces, brown stock and Espagnole sauce. One of the five French mother sauces, Espagnole sauce is made with caramelized mirepoix, tomatoes, and brown roux. Brown stock forms the other half of a demi-glace, and it is often made from veal or beef.  Reducing the mixture of these two sauces to a glaze produces a sauce with a shiny look and a delicate yet hearty flavor. Making a demi-glace in your own kitchen can prove a time consuming process due to the requirement for multiple reductions. Let More Than Gourmet’s sauce chefs do the hard work of preparing this sauce, so that you can get straight to the fun part of cooking! We follow Escoffier’s recipes to provide you with amazing demi-glace.

What is demi-glace sauce used for? More Than Gourmet offers several delicious recipe ideas to help you cook with demi-glace sauce. Our classic French demi-glace forms the starting point for meals that fit any budget or time constraint.  Add wine or mushrooms (or both) to our demi-glace to create a sauce that transforms even the simplest cut of meat into a gourmet delicacy. The demi-glace gives your sauce a glossy look for expert presentation. Tangy barbeque sauce made with demi-glace gains a richer flavor that makes it perfect for grilled dishes. If the weather keeps you inside, an oven-barbecue delivers the flavor without exposure to the elements.  Short on time? Simply reconstitute our demi-glace with a little water for a tasty glaze to accompany pan-cooked meat or vegetables.

What is demi-glace sauce from More Than Gourmet? Our demi-glace is reduced four times further than the initial recipe calls for to create a richer, more concentrated flavor base. We even have an AVA-certified vegan version for those who prefer to avoid meat. Shop our pantry to prepare amazing meals easily with demi-glace.

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Posted in The Sauce Guys

All About Our Red Wine Sauce

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

Whether you’re a casual cooking enthusiast or culinary bon vivant, you understand that it’s all about the sauce. In the finest restaurants in the world, cooks labor, sometimes for days, to produce the perfect sauce—the foundation for all great cooking. It’s all about the sauce for them, too.

Imagine an exquisite Bordelaise sauce on a tender filet mignon, a thick pork chop in a pool of tangy mustard sauce, or a spicy black pepper sauce drizzled over a grilled strip steak.  One of the most luxurious sauces is a classic red wine sauce.  It takes lots of time and care and expertise to make a good one.  Don’t have the luxury of hours to spend making a sauce?  You don’t have to because at More Than Gourmet we already did.

MTG’s Red Wine Sauce is a ready-to-use demi-glace enriched with red wine.  A demi-glace is a rich, full-flavored sauce made, in the French tradition, by combining a savory brown stock with a brown sauce (made with brown stock, tomatoes, herbs, and caramelized vegetables) and simmering the mixture until it reduces to a full-bodied, glossy consistency.  The red wine we add to the demi-glace contributes its own color, aroma, and complex flavor, and it also carries and enhances the flavors already present in the sauce.

What to do with our Red Wine Sauce?  We’ve come across some delicious ideas:

  • Sauté a minced shallot, some sliced mushrooms, and some crushed peppercorns, then add a splash of red wine and Red Wine Sauce.  Simmer for a couple of minutes, whisk in a little cream if you like, and you have flavorful Mushroom Au Poivre Sauce perfect for ladling over a lamb or veal chop or a grilled steak.
  • To make an incredibly simple, quick, and delicious sauce:  Combine some shallots and Port wine and simmer for about 5 minutes to reduce the Port a little, then stir in Red Wine Sauce, simmer a couple minutes more, and you’re done.  You have a luscious Port sauce to serve over beef tenderloin of leg of lamb, maybe with a little blue cheese scattered on top.
  • A chef from Denver sent us this great recipe for a sauce to go with grilled game: Combine Red Wine Sauce, a generous handful of fresh berries, and a couple tablespoons of berry jam.  Simmer for a few minutes, then whisk in a swirl of butter to make a savory/sweet sauce that is the perfect complement to venison, elk, or duck.

Use some of our ideas or create a few of your own. We call our Red Wine Sauce a foundation sauce because it’s good by itself and it makes a superb beginning for a sauce that you want to create based on what you have on hand or what inspires you, or both.  Consider it your sauce resource.

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Posted in The Sauce Guys, Tips and Techniques

Our Cooking Sauces are Derived from the “Mother Sauces”

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

At More Than Gourmet, we take our sauces seriously. We craft what we believe to be the best cooking sauces out there. This is partly because we’re just passionate about what we do. It’s also because we follow tradition, including making some of our sauces by starting out with mother sauces. These mother sauces form the base of nearly every sauce in the world—from simple sauce and noodles to elaborate dinner party fare.

What Are the Mother Sauces?

Espagnole, béchamel, velouté, tomato, and hollandaise are the names of the five mother sauces. Béchamel and velouté form the base for white sauces.  These are made from a white roux and milk or fish or poultry stock. Espagnole forms the base for beef and veal dishes. It is comprised of tomato, beef stock, mirepoix, and herbs. While rarely used by itself, espagnole has a complex of flavor that provides a great starting place for dishes from around the world. Hollandaise, a butter sauce laced with lemon, can be used for a variety of dishes from eggs benedict to dipping sauce for fresh vegetables.  Tomato sauce has the versatility for use in everything from pasta to braising.

A few of these mother sauces can be used without further refinement, but mostly they serve as a cooking foundation for more complex dishes. Starting out with some of these basics, we create an array of cooking sauces that will prove to be a staple in your kitchen.  Your own choices regarding the addition of herbs and spices, and the cooking method of your chosen ingredients determine your final, delicious results.

Why Are Cooking Sauces So Important?

They form the foundation of a dish. You begin with a few ingredients—meat or vegetables—and proceed to mix and add until you achieve a glorious, edible result. Having some prepared cooking sauces on hand reduces your cooking time while adding depth of flavor to your dish.  Some sauces that form the base of a more elaborate dish take a lot of time to prepare properly. Multiple reductions and simmering can take hours to complete, not to mention equipment you may not have in your home. More Than Gourmet provides these sauces for you. We perform the 30-hour reductions and grant you a delicious base to build upon.

What About Stocks?

Stocks are another great resource to have around. Use them to spruce up white rice, add some veggies or grilled meat, and your rushed weeknight dinner transforms! Stocks are also the main component for soups. These are concentrated flavors that you can use to create your own cooking sauces. A stock is made with water, poultry or meat, vegetables, and herbs. For example, chicken stock is basically chicken simmered with complementary vegetables and herbs. This flavored water is reduced time and time again to form a concentrated, chicken-flavored base. Such a base has a longer shelf life and takes up less room in your pantry or fridge.

Stocks vs. Sauce

Our stocks are concentrated flavors. You wouldn’t want a lump of bullion on your plate, and you probably wouldn’t want a plain stock as a meal feature. Cooking sauces are often created using stocks. Sauce itself enhances your meal and can play a prominent role on a plate. Sauce and just one other ingredient can become a whole meal!  Gravies, barbecue, or demi-glace sauces are a vital element.

Cooking sauces and stocks provide a basis for you to build on. A good foundation is a vital component of a good dish. For this reason, we make our many of our cooking sauces using the bases of “mother” sauces. Our sauces are the base of your meal, and the mother sauces are the bases of our sauces!

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Posted in The Sauce Guys

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