FOOD NEWS
The One Ingredient Everyone Has That Can Fix A Broken Sauce
By Alexis Montoya
The art of creating sauce can be a delicate one, especially when heat and fats are present, and when some cooks see a curdled, separated sauce, they immediately abandon it and start over. It can be discouraging to reach this point, but luckily, all you need to fix a broken sauce is one simple ingredient.
A broken sauce happens the moment it curdles, which can occur when it stays on the heat too long and too much water evaporates since there's no longer enough water to hold the fat in suspension. This can look different depending on the sauce, but no matter what you're making, all it takes to fix a broken sauce is a few spoonfuls of warm water.
Food Network legend and chef Alex Guarnaschelli says that this trick is the easiest fix to balance the excess of fatty ingredients in a sauce. Opting for water instead of a fat works because whisking in more water aids in helping the sauce emulsify, replacing the moisture that was evaporated to re-suspend fat, reviving that shiny, creamy sauce.