The Make-Ahead Sauce Solution

Author: Elisabeth Bailey
Genre: Cookbook, Nonfiction
Type: e-book
Source: NetGalley
Publisher: Storey Publishing
First Published: Oct 16, 2018
Opening Lines: Let me set the scene. It's 5:00 (or 5:30 or 6:00) and you just got home from work. You are tired. You are hungry. Your kid/spouse/parent is hungry. And crabby. And has to go to an activity/do homework/do more work/ get ready for tomorrow. Are you going to pull fresh vegetables and meat out of the fridge and create something healthy and inventive from scratch? No. No, you are not."

Book Description from GoodReads: From chimichurri to teriyaki, sauces make our mouths water — and our meals shine! Bland chicken breasts, plain pasta, or simple baked potatoes are transformed into memorable dishes with the addition of sauce.

The Make-Ahead Sauce Solution features 61 flavor-packed recipes for sauces that freeze beautifully and make home cooking easy. They run the gamut from traditional sausage ragu to Thai peanut, Gorgonzola chive butter, all-American barbecue, coconut lemon, Parmesan leek, cheesy cashew garlic, and Meyer lemon spinach. Every recipe is accompanied by a quick-reference chart showing the best base combinations of proteins and vegetables. The struggle to make imaginative, flavorful weeknight meals is over. With a few of these sauces stashed away in the freezer, a great meal can be topped off in minutes. 

My Rating: 4 stars

Answering the daily question, "What's for supper?" can often feel daunting and frustrating for busy people. Elisabeth Bailey's cookbook helps to make weeknight suppers run smoother and inspire families' taste buds so home cooks will get kudos and requests for second helpings rolling in.

Home cooks simply choose from the list of base ingredients (meats, tofu, veggies, rice, pasta …) and pair it with one of Bailey's 'flavour bomb' sauces which can be prepared and frozen ahead of time to make many different meal options.

The cookbook features 61 recipes in a well-organized, easy-to-use layout featuring photos for many of the recipes.  Recipes are categorized into different cuisines and right off the bat, there were many sauce recipes that caught my eye -- Gorgonzola Chive Butter, Pineapple Ginger Sauce, Cheddar Ale Sauce (for Mac 'n' Cheese!!) -- just to name a few.

Bailey helps new-to-the-kitchen home cooks by giving detailed instructions and tips for preparation, storage, freezing and thawing. Recipes can be stored as single servings or larger servings for couples or big batches for large groups. Along with making sauces for our household, I also plan to make single batch servings to fill my 19-year-old son's freezer that he uses while he's away at University - a little taste of home while he's away.

While the pictures and easy-to-understand instructions make prepping these sauces and bases easy for new home cooks, more experienced cooks may find the explanations redundant or oversimplified, but the wide range of sauce recipes will still entice experienced cooks.  Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the nutritional information for each sauce recipe is not included.

Overall, this is a great addition to the home cook's cookbook library. It gives busy families the ability to adapt to various tastes, serving sizes and successfully turn everyday foods into tasty, easy, family-friendly meals with less time and les stress, using ingredients many homes have on-hand or are easily accessible at the local grocery store.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.