In French, velouté means ‘velvety’ and it is one of the classical French mother sauces listed by Auguste Escoffier in his seminal cookbook Le Guide Culinaire in the early Twentieth Century. It is a white sauce that combines a blond roux with a light fish stock, chicken stock, or veal stock, depending on the desired flavour.
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What is a Velouté Sauce?
Velouté is one of the smooth, velvety sauces in French cuisine. It combines the thickness and structure of a roux as a base sauce, with the more delicate complexity of a white stock. The stock used for velouté is called white because the bones used to make it are not roasted prior to boiling. The stock is then added to a roux to thin it out.
What is a Velouté Used For?
A velouté sauce is often an accompaniment for poultry or seafood dishes, but it can also be used with heavier red meats to act as a counterbalance. Velouté also acts as a great base sauce for other ‘daughter sauces’ such as Albufera sauce (which adds a meat glaze), Allemande sauce (with a few drops of lemon juice, egg yolk, and cream) and Aurore sauce with tomato purée. A Bercy sauce adds shallots, white wine, lemon juice, and parsley to a fish velouté. A Normande sauce is a fish velouté with cream, butter, and egg yolk. Poulette sauce incorporates mushrooms and is finished with chopped parsley and lemon juice.
What are the Ingredients for a Velouté?
The ingredients are basic and there is nothing special required. A good velvety velouté is all about technique and a light touch. As always, the quality of your velouté depends largely on the quality of your ingredients. For a classic French Velouté you will need:
3 1/2 cups chicken stock, veal stock or fish stock
1 ounce clarified butter (about 2 tablespoons)
1 ounce all-purpose flour (about 3 tablespoons)
Learn how to make your own clarified butter here.
How to Make a Velouté Sauce
Bring the chicken or fish stock to a simmer in a saucepan and then lower the heat to minimum. Keep the stock hot.
In a separate saucepan, heat the clarified butter over medium heat until it breaks down, taking care not to allow the butter to brown. Velouté is a white sauce, so the butter can't be browned. Add the flour little by little and stir with a wooden spoon.
When you have a blond roux, slowly add the stock using a whisk to ensure there are no lumps. Keep a little stock aside in case you need to thin out the sauce later.
Allow the velouté to lightly simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until it has reduced by about a third, stirring regularly with the whisk to make sure the sauce doesn’t stick to the bottom and that lumps don’t form.
The velouté is ready when it is of a consistency to coat the back of a spoon without it flowing off. Remove from the heat and conserve. If there are lumps, or if it is too thick, you can save a velouté by pouring it through a wire mesh sieve and using the back of a spoon to smooth out the lumps.
