The Most Underrated French Mother Sauce Adds Incredible Flavor To Your Dishes

French cuisine has five mother sauces that the food world, but one of them is highly underrated, according to Evan Leichtling, chef and owner of Seattle's Off Alley restaurant. He tells us, "Of the five mother sauces, velouté is extremely under-appreciated and not talked about enough. It's what we as Americans call gravy, which we know has so many various uses."

Velouté, which means velvety in French, is made with a light roux (or a mixture of flour and fat, like butter), stock or broth, and some seasoning like salt and pepper, and a bay leaf. While rich in flavor, it is usually un-flashy, being light in color, and dependent on the type of stock you used.

Part of why this sauce is underrated is that velouté often serves as the foundational base for other sauces, such as chef-approved cream-based sauces like white wine sauce. And unlike Hollandaise, another French mother sauce that stars in eggs Benedict, velouté is often not the star or hero of a dish.

While velouté is not as flashy as the other French mother sauces, such as Béchamel or Hollandaise, it should be talked about more, as it adds incredible flavor to your dishes. Leichtling agrees, stating, "Here at Off Alley, we use velouté as a base for many of our sauces, pot pies, as it adds beautiful texture, and roasted flavors from the roasting of animal bones. Using a flour-thickened stock adds depth of flavor that a store-bought version or water could never replace." The texture of your final sauce is also elevated, thanks to how velvety velouté is. 

Additionally, velouté is so easy to transform and enhance. For example, by adding just one ingredient, you can transform velouté into a suprême sauce. Or, let's say you're looking to make a mushroom dish. Mix sautéed mushrooms into your velouté to make an easy and delicious mushroom sauce that would go well with your chicken or pasta dishes. Or let's say you're craving mushroom soup. Your velouté can serve as a perfect base for your cream of mushroom soup. Or take a page out of Leichtling's book and make a stunning chicken pot pie recipe this week, using velouté as the sauce that brings all the filling ingredients together.