Sauces … your secret weapon to extend the menu

The secret’s out: sauces are a cost-effective way to add a variety of different flavours to your dishes, helping to extend the menu. Their broad applicability and relatively cheap ingredient cost makes them an ideal choice to broaden your offering and at the same time add distinctive signature touches to your food.

“The importance of sauces can’t be overestimated,” says chef Gary Johnson, who describes them as the piece de resistance of a great recipe. “When I think back to when I was an apprentice chef in Europe, the saucier in a classic French kitchen was one of the most important members of staff and typically the next in line to be the sous chef. Sauces were always the crowning glory on any meal.

“That’s equally applicable today – whether it’s a hot or cold dish, the flavour combinations of your ingredients can only be enhanced by your choice of a great complementary sauce, as long as it marries up with them and doesn’t disguise the flavours it can be the added the ingredient that truly brings the dish to life.

“And the definition of a sauce is truly broad – I’ve even used soup as a sauce. Or take for example a lovely grilled piece of salmon on rice, with a little miso broth around it – that’s perfect. I made a prosciutto wrapped chicken recently with a parsley sauce underneath – the bright green of the sauce went so well with a little lemon polenta underneath a some black olive crumbed over the top. It’s not just about the flavours but the colours too and the whole effect is that the food is just bursting on the plate.”

Fantastic opportunity for menu customisation

Gary points out sauce is an indispensable component of many cuisines. “You would never dream of serving a pasta without sauce and there’s everything from classic boscaiola or cream based carbonara – choose a great pasta like puttanesca and it’s perfect for capturing the sauce.

“And when you’re talking in terms of menu extension, sauces offer a fantastic opportunity for customisation. You only have to walk into a QSR today and you’ll be presented with a choice of up to a dozen different sauces and it’s also true of the pub and club market. Consumers are increasingly ordering not just one sauce but two or three different varieties to go with their steak or chicken, or a variety of dipping sauces for their chicken wings.”

To keep the menu fresh and take advantage of fresh seasonal produce, Gary recommends introducing new sauces each season. “Tropical flavours are predominating right now, we’re seeing the rise of yuzu and calamansi finger lime mayonnaises. Vegan sauces are a great complement to plant-based foods and allow you to spruik functional and nutritional benefits such as to the immune system as well.”

Gary emphasises the opportunity for variety is limited only by the chef’s imagination: “You can range your offerings from truffle jus with roast meat, to a smoked oyster tartare for battered fish. We’re also seeing the rise of Asian sauces like Korean gochujang, which is like a bell pepper and chilli combo sauce with the addition of several other ingredients. It’s one of the ingredients in kimchi and it imparts that powerful flavour, but it also has applications in other dishes. You can put a little in your mayo or in a jam for fried chicken – it’s becoming quite widely used locally. It started out with Korean chefs using it in our kitchens and now customers are saying wow, what else can you do with that? And so the smart chefs are experimenting to find out.”

More cafes and restaurants making their own sauces

From chef Adam Moore’s vantage point, trends in sauces have shifted over the past few months and one of the drivers is the increasing demand for naturally sourced ingredients – “no e-numbers,” as Adam puts it.

“I think a lot more cafes and restaurants are making their own mustards, mayos, even their own tomato sauces from all-natural ingredients – they’re not going with commercial products because it’s all about that freshness of flavour. This may be partly due to a lot of chefs producing sauces and then pushing them out to retailers – in recognition of consumers wanting the long shelf life without the additives.

“We’re also seeing the rise of ingredients not traditionally used in sauces, as chefs continue to experiment. We’re now seeing coffee-based savoury sauces as a marinade – everything from coffee whisky glaze to coffee barbecue sauce. This is a great example of how to use sauces for menu extension.

“And the other big swing is to dipping sauces, and funnily enough people are not just serving them individually but combining them to form premium sauces. For example, mixing barbecue sauce and aioli – this is going great guns in the burger category, where people are basically using stock-based sauces that you can dip your burger in. It’s not thick like a mayonnaise, it’s a bit more runny and it’s used for dipping, like tomato sauce but taken to the next level.”

Adam also cites the use of bigger inclusions in sauces – such as adding Japanese pickles to your mayo or aioli to create a premiumised version of sauce tartare. Hot sauces are also in vogue – “there’s lots of TikTok challenges about who’s got the hottest sauce, or who can stand the burn,” Adam chuckles. “It’s not just about the heat, it’s about how long the burn lasts!”

Putting your identity on your food

Markus Werner, National Executive Chef at Delaware North Australia, echoes Adam’s comments regarding the ubiquity of dipping sauces. “In all our restaurants we are now automatically offering a wider variety – you can’t get away without a chimichurri or sriracha anymore, you’ll find them on any menu. Ponzu sauce, which is a Japanese citrus-based sauce with a tangy aftertaste, is rapidly making gains on the market here too.

“And of course if you go to any barbecue or burger place everyone now has their own burger or barbecue sauce with different levels of smokiness. I think these types of sauces present a great opportunity to put your identity on your food – the important thing is that your sauce, like your food, has to taste like it’s really fresh-made with great ingredients, not just sugar and flavour, but fresh flavours that have been cooked out.

“Everyone is doing old-fashioned tomato sugo sauce right now from fresh ripe tomatoes and bottling it themselves. Consumers will always love a great piece of meat, chicken or fish with beautiful dipping or side sauces. We make our own mustard mix and have it as a complimentary serve on the table, the bearnaise is bulked up with ingredients so customers know its fresh-made, not from a pack. When I marinate my fish at home now I’ll use a fresh-made Korean sauce and my 10 year old loves it, so the days of just tomato and barbecue sauce are well past.

“At home we have five different sauces on the table because everyone has different taste, and that applies equally when dining out. Fresh bulk flavours are always best and we have so many cultural influences coming into our menus so the opportunities for extension are enormous. I think flavour profiles are getting more complex and generic sauces just won’t cut it anymore.”