Creepy Uncle Sam's Gastronomy Guide For The Apocalypse

Chapter XI: Sauces With Mother's Love

Sometimes, you just want a quick fix.

Be it that you're on the road, roasting a suckling pig over a fire pit, or trying to make cacti taste anything but green — the most insipid of colors — we are often in quick need of delicious condiments, as fast as possible. You need space for all those bullets and duck tape you take in your travels after all.

Because the patent for our Condiment-a-tron has been put on hold since a Continental Ballistic Missile blew up the patent office, we will have to rely on the next best way to impart a bunch of flavor into our food — sauces! And no, we don't mean ketchup. Bringing ketchup into any food is like using a cannon to kill a fly. Sure, it works, but you will make more damage than good.

Sauce comes from the Latin salsus which means tasty liquid thang. Since we made sure that every Latin book was destroyed during the first wave of [INSERT CAUSE HERE] I am sure you won't be able to verify this claim. Some say that it actually means "salty" but we are unable to verify that, again, because every Latin book was destroyed.

The importance of sauces lies in that:

-They provide flavor, smell, texture and visual interest to the dishes it accompanies.

-They are part of a dish, improving, disguising or breaking down its flavor.

- Sometimes, it can be used as a cooking medium.

- Determines the name of a dish and can define its origin, depending on the products with which it is satisfied. Like tomato sauce, radiation sauce, Mabearpig sauce, and so on.

Sauces are the pride and joy of French cuisine, may they rest in pieces.

Sauces are used to complement and round out a flavor. They incorporate humidity and succulence to the preparations. They enhance the natural flavor of the products. They bring out joy to the lifeless, empty husks of civilization. They also add a visual flair that can't be compared.

To make a long story short, sauces are a versatile tool that will make you, the apocalyptic chef, stand out among the rubble. After finishing this chapter, you might want to hide, as roving bands of post-punk junkrats will most likely try to capture and kill you for your recipes.

Out of all the sauces, 5 are considered the most important, usually called Mother Sauces. Not because they are made with motherly love, because these are the 5 most basic sauces that can be transformed -- or give "birth" -- to other sauces. Look, I never said this analogy made sense. Blame the French for it.

These 5 sauces are Hollandaise, Veloute, Bechamel, Espagnole, and Tomato Sauce. They weren't creative enough to name the last one something funny and French like Hon-Hon-Baguette sauce.

Although they are very different, they all follow the same formula, which is liquid + a thickening agent + a stock. That's right! We will be using the stocks we made in the last chapter. That's called follow-through.

THICCENING AGENTS:

A thickening agent is an animal or vegetable element with a high protein content or starch, respectively, which allows us to give consistency, texture and increase viscosity in a preparation. We use them to make any sauce dummy thicc.

SCIENTIFIC MUMBO-JUMBO OF THICKENERS:

Starches give a thick consistency to preparations through the swelling of its molecules when hydrated, preferably used after a day at the gym for extra swolness, that is, when in contact with a liquid at high temperatures. This process is known as gelatinization. Some fats also give a thick consistency to preparations due to the emulsifying effect they possess.