Properly cooked meat always has an excellent taste, but even a perfectly cooked dish often lacks one small detail - the sauce. How to choose the one that best complements the taste of meat from a huge variety of sauces?
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Meat sauces - general principles and methods of preparation
First of all, when choosing a sauce for meat, you should rely on your own taste, because many gravy is compatible with meat dishes. But still there are a few tips that are worth considering. For example, spicy, sour or sweet and sour sauces are more suitable for fatty and fried meat, based on fruit or berry puree - cranberries, cherries, lingonberries, apples, cherry plum, sometimes lemon juice or vinegar is added to them. Lean or boiled meat goes well with sour cream, cream, tomato or mustard sauces. For baking meat in the oven, cream and milk gravy are perfect.
If the sauce is prepared from berries or fruits, they are first boiled until completely soft and chopped with a mixer or blender - so the consistency of the gravy will be uniform. To prepare sauces based on an oil-flour mixture, the flour is preliminarily calcined in a dry pan or fried in oil, and then only mixed with broth, milk, cream or tomato juice.
Onion marmalade sauce
It perfectly complements any fried meat, an unusual combination of sweet onion sauce and meat will not leave anyone indifferent. You can cook it from available products, in a glass dish in the refrigerator it can be stored for about 6 months. Red onions can be replaced with ordinary onions or shallots. Spice lovers can add spices to their taste.
For cooking you will need:
- 1 kg of red onion;
- 50 g of olive oil;
- 75 g of sugar;
- 100 ml of dry red wine;
- 4 tablespoons of wine vinegar.
Cut the onion rings and fry in olive oil for five minutes, make sure that it does not burn, otherwise the sauce will get a bitter taste. Add all other ingredients to the onion, mix and simmer over low heat for about an hour, stirring constantly. During cooking, the onion should become transparent and sticky, and the marmalade in consistency should resemble confiture.
Cranberry Sauce
The pleasant sweet and sour taste of cranberry sauce will perfectly emphasize the taste of any meat, poultry, fish or game. It can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks. Fresh and frozen berries are also suitable for its preparation, the latter, however, will have to be thawed beforehand.
For the sauce you will need:
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 glass of water
- 2 glasses of cranberries.
First of all, you need to make syrup. To do this, dissolve sugar in water and boil for 5 minutes. Grind cranberries in a blender and add to the syrup. Bring to a boil and cook over low heat for 7 minutes, stirring constantly.
Hot cream sauce for meat
A simple but unusually tasty sauce that goes well with any meat.
For the sauce you will need:
- a glass of sour cream and meat broth;
- 1 spoon of tomato paste;
- 2 tablespoons of flour;
- 50 g of butter;
- 2 onions;
- pepper, paprika, salt.
Fry the flour in butter until golden brown and add chopped onion, tomato paste and, stirring constantly, fry for 2-3 minutes. Add sour cream and broth and cook for eight minutes, salt, pepper, various spices can be added to taste.
Whipped Meat Sauce
This is the easiest way to prepare the sauce for meat dishes, it does not require heat treatment, all components are simply mixed. Great for kebabs, boiled and baked meat.
For the sauce you will need:
- 150 g of sour cream and mayonnaise;
- a bunch of greens (dill, parsley, cilantro);
- a pair of garlic cloves;
- a pinch of paprika, turmeric, chili pepper.
Mix chopped herbs and garlic with sour cream and mayonnaise, season with spices and salt. Delicious sauce is ready.
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