How to Make Fat-Free Brown Sauce

Sauces were first invented to cover up the flavor or rotten or spoiled foods and meats long before refrigeration became common. Use any sauce sparingly. Enjoy the flavor of what you are eating without smothering it in--bleh!--ketchup or brown gravy. In some areas of America, gravy is ubiquitous. Grandpa used to put it on his pie. Now, that's an unhealthy relationship with gravy. Read on to learn this eHow recipe that will fool even the most die hard carnivore.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Sauce pan
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 carrots, grated
• 1 stalk of minced celery
• 1 leaf of Bay
• 2 cups thinly slice mushrooms (Shiitake would be great)
• 1 can organic tomato paste
• 1/4 cup mushroom soy sauce to darken the sauce and add flavor.
• 1 cup dry red wine
• A slurry of 3 tbsp. each of water and cornstarch, mixed together well
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste

How to Make Fat-Free Brown Sauce

1. Cover the pot and sweat the celery, carrots, onion, and mushrooms for several minutes in the red wine to release their flavor.
2. Have the cornstarch slurry close at hand along with a whisk or a wooden spoon. Add all ingredients to the sauce pan, boil for 20 minutes. While still simmering, pour in the corn starch slurry a bit at a time and stir until desired consistency is achieved. If you accidentally thicken it too much, add some vegetable stock.
3. Cover with plastic wrap wrap to prevent a skin from forming. This sauce can be frozen in small batches for future culinary emergencies.
4. If you do not want the carrots, celery, and onions, to show, pour the viscous liquid through a strainer and use the round back of a ladle and mush all the carrots, celery, onion, into a past which will give the sauce a deeper flavor.

Tips & Warnings

• Cover the brown sauce with plastic wrap while it cools.
• Brown sauce has a long shelf life.
• This taste ethereal over the Mash Potato "Gorp" recipe
• Don't make a big deal out of the effort with the family.
• Health is the kiss of death when describing a new food to your family.
• Let them eat the brown sauce, compliment you, then tell them what they just ate and you've got them hooked.