The 5 Best Sauces For Any Fish

Discover 5 essential fish sauce recipes that every home cook and professional chef should master. From a rich chicken butter sauce for monkfish to a classic vin blanc, a silky lobster bisque, a collagen-rich Basque pil pil, and a vibrant warm tartar sauce, this video breaks down the best fish sauces used in professional kitchens.
Learn how to make these Michelin-quality sauces at home using accessible techniques like emulsification, deglazing, butter poaching, and building flavour with stock.

VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 – The 5 Sauces You Need to Learn
00:11 – Chicken Butter Sauce
02:42 – Vin Blanc
05:46 – Sauce Pil Pil
09:01 – Lobster Bisque
12:43 – Warm Tartare

These are five fish sauces every chef needs to learn, starting with one that technically breaks all the rules. There’s a classical rule in French cooking that you only use fish stocks with fish, not meat. But my favorite sauce for fish is chicken butter sauce with a monkfish tail. So why that works is because you’ve got a nice robust fish like monk fish that’ll work really well with the saltiness, the intensity of a beautiful meat-based sauce. This is a pre-bought chicken stock. It’s good quality cuz you can see the amount of gelatin in there. So the only thing that I’ve really done here is just brought this to the boil any impurities that lie in the stock. And then just take a ladle and just remove those. It will give you a better clarity in your final sauce. And then you can kind of reduce it as hard as you want. Claude Bosei is one of the first ones to do it. But then the technique was kind of mirrored by people like Tom Carage, Simon Rogan. So for our monkfish, we just starting just in a little bit of oil. I’ve just trimmed off any of the senior around there. Monkfish is really good for this, but any white fish will work. So, you could use john, you could use cod, hadock, cake. And whilst that monkfish cooks, we’re just going to turn our attention to the sauce. But if you want to, you can add a bit more of a herbaceious note to the sauce. Infusing it with a little bit of thyme. Some parsley goes really, really well. Couple of turns of black pepper. Finally, I’m just going to add a little infusion of lemon zest cuz I’m going to use a lemon anyway, so you might as well get that flavor of the zest in the sauce. So, this is only going to infuse for something like 10 minutes. When I’m cooking monkfish, I basically just treat it like I would a steak, but probably on a little bit of a lower temperature. Brown butter. We’re just going to add a few herbs and then place that in the oven for about 4 minutes at 180. And then to finish this sauce, it’s really, really simple. This is like liquid gold or stuff coming out of these herbs. We’re just going to add in splash of cream. That’s going to give the sauce a little bit more body. You almost want it to be a little bit too loose at this stage because the butter when you monte it in will add structure and thickness to the sauce. So, I’ve just got some cold butter. I’m just going to emulsify that into the sauce. I’m using a hand blender for this, but you could you could easily just use a whip. And this is what we’re looking for, this ultra shiny. And then I’m just finishing that with acidity. So, this is our final sauce. Add the sauce onto our chicken butter. Split out that chicken butter a bit. this beautiful nut butter. Give that fish one last glaze. But the capers will just add this really nice acidity. There we go. Chicken bun with roast monkfish tail. Here we’ve got this beautiful split out sauce. Monkf fish. Nice and tender. Oh, look at that. Sexy. Perfectly cooked. Really elegant. The acidity gives it a really nice lightness. Stunning little sauce. Thank you, Claude Bosei. The next one we’re going to do is a Vin Blanc. It’s a very simple recipe. It’s a valute. Valute meaning velvet. As our butter browns, we can just start with the reduction of white wine. So, I’m using French white wine. Add in some shellots and reduce that down. Don’t worry about them being too fine cuz they get passed off anyway. Now, we’ve got this awesome nuttiness in our butter. I’m just going to add an equal part flour to there. Just lightly cook out that flour. You want the consistency of wet sand. and it should have this incredible sort of brown butter smell to it. This sauce is probably the oldest, well definitely the oldest one that we’re going to do today. Um, it has its roots and origins in medieval cooking, but the person who popularized it most was uh Antoine Karam, some fish stock. The meatiness and the flavor comes from this part and the sort of perfume and the acidity comes from this part. And as they marry together, it should be quite a clean finished sauce. This is this beautiful velvety consistency now. It’s nice and creamy. You get a little bit of intensity from the fish stock. My reduction is turning syrupy now. So, I’m just going to pass that off into the sauce and finish the reduction all all this one. That way, I can adjust the seasoning of the sauce as I go a little bit as well. Strain out those onions and shellot. I’m actually just going to serve it with halibet, which is a very delicate white fish, which lends itself really nicely to being steamed. How I like to steam my fish is always on a little bed of aromat. So, I’ve just got some lemons here, which I’ll place down just on top of my trusty cartou. I’ve got a little perfect portion of halibet, which I’ll just season up. So, I’m just laying it flesh side, and it won’t take long. That’ll take probably about four or 5 minutes. Okay, now it’s come together. It’s getting quite thick, so I think we want to take it off at this point. Traditionally, it’s finished with a little bit of Dijon mustard. So, the best way to do that is always to do that in a separate bowl. I always like to finish it additionally to that with a little bit of cream. The cream is just going to give me more sweetness. I also think it gives it a nice brighter color. Go in there with a little bit of lemon juice as well. All right, so our fish is probably up to temp. It’s been on there for 3 or 4 minutes. So, I’m just going to pass off my sauce to finish it. And yeah, it might look a little bit beige on beige, but to be honest, you can see why the sauce has stood the test of time. It’s very simple. It’s very clean, and it’s very elegant. So for our halibet, what I like to do is just gently remove that skin. Finish with some fresh lemon. And for the sauce, we’re going to finish it with a couple of chives. It is quite a, how do I say, a muted dish in terms of color. I just add in a little pop of green. And then just lay that sauce into the base. Classic Vimlanc all the way from Karem and Escopier. The most classic fish sauce there is. Absolutely banging. Very delicate fish with a very delicate sauce. Elegant, clean. It’s a classic for a reason. Our adventure through the the world of fish sauces has taken us now to the Basque region in northern Spain where fishermen use a combination of olive oil, chilies, and garlic and the natural collagen from some fish to make the most delightful sauce called a pilto. And what I’ve got is just some really finely sliced garlic. This works well with cod tongues or cod pallets. So cod pallet is a delicacy in northern Spain. It’s the very very gelatinous part from the throat of a cod, but it also works really really well with turbet as well because turbet has a lot of that natural collagen as well. A dried chili which I’ve just chopped up nice and fine. Okay, so we got our oil. It’s just not too hot. The the whole thing about uh this sauce is like temperature control. So, we’re just going to lightly comfy the the garlic with no color whatsoever. Essentially, you want a fish with high collagen, which is it’s going to be something like um hake or turbert. Got this banging wild turret here. And then I’ve also got the head. We’re going to bring all that to the heat. And what’s really important with this sauce is that you do not want to get the garlic in any way brown cuz that’ll add a bitterness to the sauce. For the emulsion, it’s really important that we’ve got a little bit of wine in there as well. I’m just using a Spanish huea. And then you’re going to poach it in this mixture of olive oil and white wine. The little bits of of collagen that are escaping into the sauce right now is basically what we’re looking for to thicken it in the end. It’s a bit of a labor of love doing a proper pill from scratch, but it is definitely worth it. Okay, so this has been about 10 minutes and you can see that what has essentially come out of the fish. It’s this incredibly rich, beautiful sort of collagen rich stock. And that’s sort of mingled with the wine a little bit. Our turbut’s just about cooked. So, just gently cooked. Basically, what I’m going to do now is just turn off the heat and just allow the fish to rest in that juice. Our fish has rested. It’s beautifully cooked. You can tell it’s really nice and tender. Just going to take that out of the pill base. Pass this for a sie and lightly bring it together. And if you’ve done it right, what should happen is it should just beautifully start to emulsify. And if it gets a little bit thick and add in a splash of lemon juice, this will just help the emulsion. Every time you make an emulsion, you need liquid to aid the process. So what I’ve done now is I’ve passed the whole thing off and now I’m just finishing it with that sie and just sort of rocking the pan back and forward to really help the emulsification. Don’t worry, you’ve got a few little co cloves of comfy garlic in there. It’ll be absolutely delicious. Okay. So, to play up, what we’re going to do is just use a little touch more olive oil. Nice touch of salt and all of that, pepper and lemon juice, our beautiful fillet of turbo. Really beautifully just glaze up plate with that awesome pill. That is actually quite incredible really. If you think that that’s literally just wine, olive oil, and any fish with collagen, you can make this beautiful sauce. Super simple. What I love about this is just it’s all about the technique. You know, there simple ingredients, but the technique of emulsifying it. You can see how three things can just come together magically and produce something that’s completely different. It’s an awesome sauce. It’s a lobster beast. A very, very classic sauce that comes from the area of the Bay of Bisque. So, I got some lobster heads here. The head meat is really, really important. So in here, what you can see is this looks awful right now, but this beautiful collection of lobster coral um and lobster sort of innards. You can see as it hits the oil, watch it turn the most beautiful color. So this when you get the corals in, you don’t get them every time, but it’s really important to put that inside. Shells from cooked lobsters, a couple of heads up from raw lobsters. What I’m going to do basically is just cook this and caramelize it. And I’m going to add my shellots in first and sweat them down. One thing I love about this sauce is how sweet it is. So the lobster has this beautiful resounding sweetness. And this is what we’re looking for on that sort of golden caramelization on on some of that head meat. Shelots have softened. So we’re going to add the rest of our veggies. Okay. So we got our roasted shells in there. We’ve got our sweat down aromats and vegetables. We’re going to go in there with some rice, which is a slightly an unusual ingredient in it, but it really helps to give the um give the beast a good bit of body. Some tomato puree as well. The cognac’s traditional in a in a sauce, but you can make it without. So, just flame off that cognac, then add a splash of white wine as well. So, the boozy is going to add a nice sweetness to the beast, especially as it reduces. And I’m just paying little specific attention now to the base of that pot. Just getting it really nice and clean. And then I’m just going to top up with some white fish stock. We’re going to cook it for about 45 minutes. We’re going to add in a little bokeh garnese. So this is traditional outside layer of a leak which sort of houses your thyme, a bay leaf, parsley stalks. Add a little bit of freshness whilst it cooks. And it should have that real beautiful sweetness. And as that cooks down, it’s going to get much more intense. This is ready to start blitzing. I’m just whacking in my shells with a you know good amount of the liquid as well. Okay. So just start by pulsing it otherwise it will go absolutely mental and then blitz it on a high speed. If you don’t have a shininoa you can just use a fine sie. When you do pass off your beast you’ll get quite a lot of residual left over and what you’re left with is this sort of beautiful velvety fish sauce with this like lobster red reddish hue to it. And then to finish, we’re going to add an absolute ton of fresh lemon juice. Good hit of flaky salt. So our biscuit is finished and we’re just going to poach our fish. Butter poaching. So we just start off with a little bit of fish stock and then a good amount of butter. Depending on the thickness of your fish, all you do is you bring your butter liquid up to the boil, drop your fillets in, and leave it 4 minutes. Take them out. And butter poaching just gives you this really, really delicate consistency and texture. So that can now be off the heat. You don’t need to boil that at all. And it will just rest up to temperature. Okay. So to finish our bees, just add a tiny splash of cream. Again, just richness and sweetness and just a knob of butter. Improve the sheen and the gloss of the final sauce. Beast goes in the base the plate. Johnori comes out. Tiny bit of lemon juice on the fish. And then super clean presentation. I love the simple presentation of just serving that beast with the with the sauce. This fish is really tender. It might seem a little bit extra using lobsters in the um in your sauce, but if you are making lobsters or prawns or crab, it is worth just saving those shells and giving this one a go. M super sweet and packed with flavor. A warm tartar sauce. It’s the flavors of a tartar in a warm sauce. So, if you were to heat up the mayonnaise, it would split. That’s why people call it a warm tartar sauce. This is just a beautiful little chunk of salmon. And then just sort of barreling the the fillet. So, it’s got a nice sort of beautiful rounded shape to it. 60% salt, 40% sugar. Doesn’t need to be an exact science. White pepper. I’m just going to add a little bit of lemon zest to that as well. This is a really good sort of basic fish cure. And I I always like to cure salmon before I uh conf it just because I think it firms it up a little bit and it really takes on like the aromats of the lemon and the pepper. So that will cure around about 30 minutes whilst you make your sauce. White wine and we got some white wine vinegar in there as well. Now let’s add all of our shellots to my reduction. Few nice peppercorns. Some parsley stock and then this is going to reduce down until it’s really nice and syrupy. Then you can start with the mison plast for the rest of the sauce. So what we’re going to do is we’ve just got some cornishons. And how I like to do it is basically cut them into quarters and then just dice them. So you have these beautiful little neat even sort of chunks of corn. Okay, so we’re going to add some capers to our sauce. Just roughly chop those and a little bit of bruno shellot. Just going to chop up some parsley as well. And the last ingredient is just the zest of one lemon. So what we’re left with here is this almost syrupy consistency. Taking off the heat now. Just going to start emulsifying in our butter. The base of the burblong is ready. So cream will just help to stabilize it. And I’m just going to let that infuse with the shelots for around about 10 minutes whilst I sort out the the salmon. Okay, so the salmon has cured now and we’re just going to wash off that salmon cure in here. What we’ve got is equal parts olive oil, extra virgin olive oil and butter. This is the best way to do comfy salmon. I’m just going to heat that up to around about 67°. We’re going to put our oil and our butter into a container with which the salmon can be fully submerged. And then we’re just going to drop in our salmon. That’s going to cook for around about 8 to 10 minutes really lightly, really gently in that comfy fat. Now to finish our sauce, just pass off our burlanc. Being really diligent to get all of the juice out of these shelots. Really, really squeeze that out. So we’re going to go in with our cornons first. our capers, our bruno shellot, touch of salt, parsley, dill, lemon zest, pepper, and that’s the kind of consistency you want. You don’t want it to be too thick. Really beautiful, bright, vibrant sauce. And to play up, all we do is just liberally add in our sauce. You should have a little bit of like lemon zest, a little bit of brininess from the capers, a little bit of the texture from the cornons. Add on your super soft comfy salmon. Best one of the day. Save the best till last. So, comfy salmon with warm tartar sauce. Simple, elegant perfection. I can’t wait to see this comment section. Oh, it’s raw. Oh. Oh, it’s raw. It’s not raw. It’s perfectly cooked. You’re wrong. Or maybe you just don’t like it like that. But translucent, really soft, delicate, comfy. Same money fee.