Other Cooking Sauces

Cooking sauces and pastes are jars cooks use to build a dish's flavor, in the pan or at the table. Examples are Mexican mole bases, chipotle sauces, North African chile pastes and Italian colatura, a fermented fish sauce.

How to choose Other Cooking Sauces

  • Dried chile base. Most of Mexico's dried ancho, mulato, guajillo and pasilla chiles go to mole makers. Pasilla rates only 1,000 to 1,500 Scoville units, far below a jalapeño, so a mole is usually more about flavor than burn.
  • Smoke. Chipotle is a jalapeño that has been dried and smoked, and morita chiles are treated the same way. Sauces built on them taste of wood smoke.
  • Acid. Many vegetable and chile sauces sold sealed at room temperature are acidified foods, brought to a pH of 4.6 or lower with added acid.

About Other Cooking Sauces

Other cooking sauces are jarred bases, pastes and seasoning liquids that cooks use to flavor a dish. In Mexico, chiles are eaten fresh or cooked, and dried chiles also serve as a condiment or spice in traditional dishes.

Fish sauces such as colatura are made by layering fish with salt and collecting the liquid that seeps out over months. The Codex standard for fish sauce asks for a clear liquid with a salty taste and fish flavor.

Store unopened jars in a cool, dry place below 85°F. Once a jar is open, move what is left into a clean container and keep it in the refrigerator.

At a glance

Main types
Mole, chipotle sauce, chile paste, colatura
Made from
Dried chiles, garlic, spices, salted fish
Once opened
Refrigerate in a clean, covered container

Other Cooking Sauces questions

What is the difference between colatura and Asian fish sauce?

Colatura is the heir of garum, the fish sauce of ancient Rome, and like Asian fish sauce it is fish fermented with salt. The protected Colatura di Alici di Cetara uses anchovies from the sea off Salerno province, salted head to tail in small wooden barrels called terzigni. The liquid is concentrated in the sun for four to five months and filtered through linen. Asian fish sauces may use other fish.

What does umami mean, and which sauces have the most?

Umami is the savory taste of glutamate and of two related compounds: inosinate, found mainly in meat and fish, and guanylate, found in dried mushrooms. Glutamate is found in many aged and fermented foods. Tables from Japan's Umami Information Center put fish sauce, miso and Parmigiano Reggiano among the high scorers, and ripe tomatoes carry a smaller share. That is why a few drops of a fermented sauce make a stew or braise taste fuller.

Sources: Government of Mexico; Regione Campania; University of Arizona Cooperative Extension.

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