Culinary school: The salt experiment

Day 6 Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I sprinkled a pinch of salt into the chicken veloute sauce, whisked and tasted the sauce. It was still bland. I added another pinch of salt, tasted and added more.

It was as if I were back in my high school chemistry class doing a titration experiment and trying to figure out the pH of a solution by painstakingly adding drops from a different solution.

The previous sauce my partner and I did — a bechamel— lacked salt, Chef X said. This time, we wanted to make sure we got it right.

Chicken veloute is a sauce made of chicken stock that is thickened by a roux of flour and melted butter.

I took another taste of the sauce and moved the tip of my tongue back and forth over the veloute, judging its salt level. The sauce wasn't ready yet. When I felt the full flavor of the sauce, when I could actually taste salt in the sauce, I would stop.

After many pinches of salt, my partner and I took it up to Chef X for inspection.

He swiped the sauce with his spoon and tasted it, tapping the top of his mouth a couple times with the tip of his tongue and moving his lips simultaneously.

He looked at Gillian and then at me.

"Dat is excellent," he said in his French accent.

We beamed.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers
Day 4: The dreaded Tournage
Day 5: Making Stocks