Integral Meat Sauces

Integral sauces are made from the natural juices released by meats, fish, and vegetables during cooking. The methods used to prepare these sauces depend on whether the food is sautéed, poached, braised, roasted, or grilled. A well-made integral sauce is an extract of a food’s natural flavors and should capture and heighten the flavor of the food being prepared. Many contemporary chefs have at least partially abandoned some traditional stock-based sauce-making methods in favor of integral sauces, which often have a fuller, more direct, more spontaneous, home-cooked flavor.