Here's Why You Should Lay on the Sauce

One of the defining characteristics of restaurant cooking--high quality restaurant cooking--is that chefs go to extreme lengths to coax flavors out of ingredients: A sauce may be several days in process. A bread dough may take years for its starter to develop its subtle flavors.

But if you are a home cook who is hungry for richly flavorful foods and you don’t want to cook around the clock and you don’t want to eat processed food--which by nature of its additives such as high concentrations of sodium and glutumate is also very flavorful--there are simple things you can do to add the complexity of long-process flavor to your food.

Start with four sauces that should always be found in your cupboard: full-bodied soy sauce, Crystal hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and balsamic vinegar. Each one of these undergoes its own long-term process, whether by fermentation, aging in wood barrels, or simply the beneficial marrying of flavorful ingredients allowed to meld together over time. Each sauce is made from real ingredients, each has its own story, each contains multitudes of complex flavors that when blended artfully together will imbue your cooking with layers of invisible complexity that your palate will appreciate and your dining companions will become excited by.

How and when do you use these sauces? Whenever and wherever you can. Add them drop by drop to sauces, soups, salad dressings, dips, or any liquid in which they can be dissolved, including cream-based items. Why do they work? Because they all contain elements of the five flavors commonly recognized by chefs: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, that mysterious "fifth" flavor that is found in savory foods such as soy sauce, seaweed, and the anchovies which are the backbone of Worcestershire.

One caveat: No one should ever bite into something and immediately recognize the flavor of one of these sauces, so use them judiciously. And then watch your cooking take flight.