Here's How to Thicken Your Sauce With a Quick Fix (2024)

FAQs

Here's How to Thicken Your Sauce With a Quick Fix? ›

Combine equal parts cornstarch and cold water. Stir together until smooth. Pour into your sauce and cook over medium heat, stirring continually, until the sauce reaches your desired consistency. Test the sauce with a spoon.

Use one tablespoon cornstarch mixed with one tablespoon cold water (aka a cornstarch slurry) for each cup of medium-thick sauce. Thoroughly mix the cornstarch and water together, then pour into your sauce. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly.

Wheat flour is used extensively in professional kitchens as a thickening agent. Although it can be combined with water to create a whitewash, it is more commonly mixed with fat, which surrounds the starch granules and prevents clumping when added to hot liquids.

The most readily available sauce-thickener is flour. For a too-thin sauce, try adding a slurry (equal parts flour and water, whisked together) or beurre manie (equal parts softened butter and flour, kneaded together to form a paste)—both are ideal thickeners for rich and creamy sauces, such as steak sauce recipes.

Cornstarch is the most common thickening agent used in the industry. It is mixed with water or juice and boiled to make fillings and to give a glossy semi-clear finish to products.

When to Keep the Lid Off. Cooking a soup, stew, or sauce uncovered allows water to evaporate, so if your goal is to reduce a sauce or thicken a soup, skip the lid. The longer you cook your dish, the more water that will evaporate and the thicker the liquid becomes—that means the flavors become more concentrated, too.

Add about 1 tablespoon of cornflour per cup of sauce but don't dump it straight in or it will clump. Instead, make a mixture with equal parts cornflour and cold water and whisk this into your sauce.

Easy-to-access alternatives are wheat flour, arrowroot flour, and rice flour. These are good alternatives to cornstarch because they are more nutritious and contain fewer carbohydrates and calories. Xanthan and guar gum are much stronger thickeners than cornstarch, but they can be harder to obtain and use.

Does simmering thicken sauce? ›

At first, the liquid appears thin and watery, and as the water evaporates, it thickens nicely to coat each bit of meat. You can apply the same principle to any sauce reduction: Simmer the sauce in a sauce pot until it reaches your desired consistency.

To be clear, butter won't thicken up sauces quite like cornstarch or something similar would, but it's great for adding extra richness and glossy texture to pasta and pan sauces.

Beurre Manié (French for “kneaded butter”) is made by mixing equals parts of softened butter and flour. This dough or paste is used to thicken sauces, soups and stews.

Other thickening starches include cornstarch, arrowroot, bread crumbs and other vegetable and grain products such as potato starch and rice flour. Starches thicken by gelatinization, the process in which starch granules absorb water and swell to many time to their original size.

To reduce in cooking, start by boiling your liquid in an uncovered pan and reducing the heat to a simmer. As it simmers, monitor the liquid closely until it reaches the consistency you desire. If you're having trouble getting your liquid to reduce, sprinkle in a few spoonfuls of a thickener, like cornstarch or flour.

When to Keep the Lid Off. Cooking a soup, stew, or sauce uncovered allows water to evaporate, so if your goal is to reduce a sauce or thicken a soup, skip the lid. The longer you cook your dish, the more water that will evaporate and the thicker the liquid becomes—that means the flavors become more concentrated, too.

Cornstarch: Make a slurry of half water, half cornstarch and whisk until smooth. Cornstarch is a powerful thickener, so start by whisking in no more than 1 tablespoon of the mixture per 2 cups of simmering sauce; stir and simmer for 2 minutes, check the thickness, and repeat with more slurry as needed.