Thickening your butter garlic sauce to the right consitancy will dramatically enhance your meal.
There are countless methods for thickening a sauce. Depending on the sauce, some methods are better than others. When working with a butter sauce, it might be slightly more difficult to thicken due to its high oil content. Preventing your butter garlic sauce from clumping will be your main objective when thickening it. It's important to be patient when thickening butter sauce since too much of thickening agent can easily cause clumping. But, if you have patience, any of these three thickening methods will work perfectly.
Instructions
1. Thicken your butter garlic sauce with a roux. A roux could be the exact solution you're looking for since the base of a roux is butter. To make a roux, add equal parts butter (1/4 cup of butter) and flour (1/4 cup flour) to a pan over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt, whisk the ingredients together and cook it for several minutes. It's important to cook the roux to get rid of that raw flour flavor. Once your roux has cooked to a beautiful golden color and no longer tastes of raw flour, slowly and in small increments, add the roux to your butter garlic sauce to thicken it to the desired consistency. Stir your sauce as you add the roux to prevent any lumps from forming. The roux is a great option since it won't change the flavor of your butter garlic sauce very much.
2. Thicken your butter garlic sauce by creating a cornstarch slurry. To make the slurry, add 1 tbsp. of cornstarch to a small amount of cold water and dissolve it thoroughly by mixing. Add the slurry in small increments to your butter garlic sauce, constantly stirring it to prevent lumping, until it reaches the desired consistency. A slurry has such a small amount of cornstarch that it won't alter the flavor of your sauce. Just be sure to add it slowly, while stirring, allowing the sauce to thicken before you add more. Too much slurry could result in a sauce that's too thick.
3. Thicken your butter garlic sauce by allowing it to reduce over high heat. Reducing over high heat is considered by many to be the best and most natural thickening process. Simply turn your stove up to a high temperature and allow your sauce to reduce to a greater thickness. Stir your sauce vigorously during the reduction process to prevent any burning. You can also reduce over a low temperature; this takes longer, but is safer as there is less chance of burning your sauce, and the results are the same. If you choose to reduce your sauce, it's important to remember that as it reduces, all the spices and seasoning will intensify as the liquid evaporates. A good counter to this is to under season your sauce. You can always add more seasoning once the sauce has thickened.
Tags: butter garlic sauce, your butter, your butter garlic, your sauce, garlic sauce, butter garlic, butter garlic
