The head chef from one of London’s trendiest restaurants has shared a simple two-ingredient mother sauce for home cooks to improve every meal.
The capital’s Fallow restaurant has built a reputation for its bold and consistently delicious flavours to make it one of the city’s trendiest spots to grab a bite.
The diner is also known for its creative and sustainable cooking with menu specialities including ‘Crispy old spot pig’s head’ (£59) and Smoked cod’s head (£29).
The restaurant is also well known for its YouTube channel which posts videos of its chefs sharing recipes, tips and longer format videos showing what an hour of working inside a top London kitchen looks like.
One of these videos features Jack Croft explaining how simple it is to create the “ultimate silky butter sauce” from just water and butter.
“The butter emulsion is a classic sauce used in Michelin-starred restaurants all across the country. It’s essentially just an emulsification of water and butter then we’re going to season it and then that base can be used for hundreds of recipes – I’m going to be showing you three examples.”
Jack recommends a 5:2 ratio of butter to water before placing the water on a medium heat. “We are going to place three quarters of our butter into the pan, along with the water, at this stage it doesn’t need to be diced you can put it directly into the pan – then add a couple pinches of salt for seasoning.
“As this melts, we’re going to whisk it. This is a very simple recipe – the water can be at any temperature when it goes in because we’re going to be boiling it anyway. At this stage, the butter and water are mixed but not emulsified. We want to make sure this liquid is close to boiling before adding the other quarter of butter.”
Jack adds that if the water becomes too warm prematurely and melts the butter then you blend in the remaining quarter it’s going to thicken the mixture – putting you in danger of splitting it.
“Now, my butter and water is fully melted, nice and hot. I’m going to take the pan of the heat and with one hand I’ll blend the emulsion [with a hand blender] and with the other I’ll add the remaining quarter of cold butter. Blend together until it forms a smooth and silky sauce – maybe 20 – 30 seconds.”
The colour of the liquid turns from a “melted, yellowy-looking emulsion to an almost enriched double cream” And that’s the sauce complete. Jack warns to look out for the correct quantities and that the liquid is close to boiling before adding the final quarter of butter before the blending stage.
The video also includes instructions using the sauce to create a miso butter emulsion with cabbage, tartare beurre blanc emulsion with cod and a sriracha butter sauce with mussels.