A great sauce is one way to take your meal from pretty good to absolute perfection. An out-of-this-world sauce can also hide imperfections. Sauces aren’t as difficult to master as many would like to believe, Here are some tips that can get you on your way to making sauces that your family and guests will adore.

1. Use Fresh Ingredients

Fresh ingredients will always give you the best flavor in your sauce. Not only because the flavors are fresh, but also because you can choose the quality of the ingredients. As sauces reduce, the flavors of the ingredients will concentrate. When you opt for fresh and high-quality ingredients to blend with a top-grade immersion blender, you’ll experience a much tastier sauce.

2. Make Your Own Stock

Homemade stock is at the base of any great stock-based sauce. Stocks are pretty easy to make. Simmer your meats, vegetables, poultry, or seafood to get a rich-flavored sauce that is sure to be noticed. Try roasting your stock ingredients first to provide a deeper flavor. There’s nothing wrong with using a carton or a can of stock, but homemade is always going to be a winner.

3. Don’t Stress Yourself

Although homemade stocks are the better pick, don’t stress yourself about it if you can’t manage it. Likewise, many traditional sauces call for a demi-glace, a reduced veal stock with espagnole sauce. Most folks aren’t going to gather 10 pounds of veal bones to make a stock and reduce it down to one single cup of sauce. Stock in a box or can and premade sauces are perfectly acceptable when that’s what you have room for. Improve your store-bought sauces and stocks by adding a few fresh ingredients like celery and thyme.

4. Thicken with Starch

Use a starch like flour to thicken your sauces. But don’t just add flour to your sauces. You’ll have to make a roux, a mixture of butter and flour, to get the thickness without the lumps. Mix equal parts flour and butter in the saucepan before adding liquids to it, and your sauce will thicken as it cooks. A quick thickener is a cornstarch slurry, a mix of cold water and cornstarch. Using starches to thicken a sauce can tone down some of the sauce’s flavors.

5. Reduce It

You can also thicken a sauce by reducing it. Simmering your sauce allows moisture to evaporate and creates a lovely, viscous sauce. When reducing sauces, it’s a good idea to season it after you’ve completed the reduction. Seasoning too early can lead to an overly salty, sour, or sweet sauce. Other additions that can thicken sauces include cashew cream, chia seeds, plantains, and nut butters.

6. Master Pan Sauces

There’s nothing like a good pan sauce. The trick to a good pan sauce is to sufficiently sear your meat. Once you’ve gotten a good searing, remove it from the pan and add broth, wine, or beer along with some aromatics like rosemary and garlic to deglaze the pan by scraping and stirring around the brown bits that are stuck to the bottom of the pan. Let it simmer for a bit then put your protein back in to let everything come together.

7. Create an Emulsion

If you need a creamy or glossy sauce, you’re gonna want an emulsion. This means you’ll be blending fat and water molecules together, like a hollandaise sauce or mayonnaise. Heavy cream, egg yolk, and butter are commonly used fats in emulsions.

8. Taste As You Go

Keep an eye on everything by tasting it as you move along. This will ensure that you’re making what you want to make and that your sauce is nicely balanced. A liquid that’s already salty or sweet will need to be diluted before reducing, but you won’t know that it’s got great flavor if you don’t taste it first.

9. Match the Sauce to the Meal

Allow your sauce to balance your dish. You don’t want to drown out light flavors with a heavy sauce. A great sauce will either contrast or compliment your meal.

Basic sauces are easy to master. But you won’t master them if you don’t try them out. Keep practicing and you’ll be a sauce wizard in no time.