Classic Velouté Sauce

If you’ve ever made chicken pot pie, you’ve probably made it with a velouté sauce.

Considered one of the five “mother” sauces in classic French cuisine (Béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato sauce) velouté is a light creamy sauce made from chicken, fish, veal, or vegetable broth thickened with a blond roux of butter and flour.

How to make a velouté sauce

With its roots in classic French cuisine, you might think the sauce would be difficult and time-consuming to prepare. It is not! You can whip up the sauce in under 10 minutes, and you only need three ingredients: butter, flour, and stock.

You start with a blond roux– a mixture of flour and butter, simmering over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes. The goal at this point is to cook the flour without browning it, so the sauce stays slightly colored but doesn’t end up tasting overly pasty or floury. the roux is the thickening agent for the sauce.

Once the roux has cooked for a minute or two, add half the broth and toss to remove any lumps. Then stir in the rest of the broth. Many recipes call for hot broth, but I’ve found heating the broth to be an unnecessary extra step. The sauce will take a little longer to come to a boil, so keep that in mind.

Once the sauce boils, it needs to continue cooking for at least a minute to further cook out the flour. Stir constantly and keep an eye on the bottom of the pot to avoid burning.

Troubleshoot velouté

Velouté is very similar to béchamel sauce, also known as white sauce or cream sauce. It’s hard to screw up if you pay attention to a few small details.

• Be careful not to brown the flour as you prepare the roux.
• If it seems to be cooking too quickly, slide the pan off the heat and continue beating.
• Once you’ve added the broth, keep stirring constantly to avoid lumps forming and the bottom of the pot burning.
• Taking the time to cook the flour is the key to a delicious sauce!

If the sauce is too thick or too thin, you can easily adjust the consistency. Add more broth if the sauce is too thick.

If it’s too thin, stir in a few teaspoons burre mania. Burre mania is the French term (literally “kneaded butter”) for a paste of equal parts butter and flour, mixed until smooth. It can be added to thicken pretty much any sauce. It melts easily in the sauce with the whisk.

The sauce needs to simmer gently for a minute or two to fully cook the flour once you’ve added that burre mania.

What can you do with velouté sauce?

The beauty of all mother sauces is that they are available to you for countless variations. Veloute is no exception.

One of our signature dishes of my restaurant days was Mussels Bercy — we folded plain whipped cream into a velouté of fish and mussel broth, white wine, and a squeeze of lemon, spooned it over cooked mussels, and held them under the grill until golden. Really very tasty dish!

Here are a few other velouté variations:

• Cream is added to chicken velouté supreme sauce, and can be served with poached or fried chicken. It covers a multitude of sins when your chicken is a bit dry.
• Velouté is made with veal stock and enriched with egg yolk and cream Sauce Allemande which can be served over pork or veal chops or scooped over poached eggs.
• You can also make a creamy vegetable soup by sautéing vegetables and pureeing them in a blender with a little vegetable broth. Add velouté and more broth and/or cream to thin to desired soup consistency.

How should Velouté be stored?

Store the velouté in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Heat on stovetop over low heat, stirring constantly.

They can also be frozen in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Reheat from frozen over low heat, stirring constantly.

More mother sauce recipes for you!

• Classic sauce tomato sauce
• Classic demi-glace sauce
• Classic Espagnole sauce
• Classic Beurre Blanc sauce