Here's How Much Liquid You'll Need To Fix Your Broken Sauce

Most of us who love cooking have experienced the horror of a broken sauce. Imagine this: You're preparing dinner. Your silky smooth, delicious sauce is coming along great, and it smells amazing. But then, you look in the pot — and your sauce has separated, seemingly no longer capable of the emulsification necessary to make a sauce work. So what do you do?

Well, as most chefs can tell you, your best hope for fixing a broken sauce is to add a bit of warm water. But water isn't your only option; depending on the sauce, various liquids could be the solution (like how cream fixes greasy gravy). The other thing to consider is how much liquid you should add. A lot of sources will tell you "just a splash," but what does that even mean?

The truth is, there's not a universal amount of liquid to add to save a sauce; it depends on the state of the sauce itself. Generally, the more broken the sauce, the more liquid needed to fix it.

Oil and water don't naturally want to mix, which is what emulsification is all about. When you're making a sauce, you're frequently forcing water (or another liquid, like stock) and oil to play together and emulsify. But oil, as a fat, can be stubborn. It only likes being incorporated slowly, and at the right temperature, and it doesn't like to sit for too long, either. These are the typical reasons why a sauce breaks.

If furiously whisking doesn't fix your broken sauce, this is when you can look at adding liquid, or a combination of liquid and oil. If it's only halfway separated, you want to add water equal to half the amount of oil that was originally added to the sauce, a bit at a time, while stirring continuously. If the sauce is fully broken, it's a bit more challenging, but it's still possible to save it. In this case, you want to add equal volumes of oil and liquid (again, only a bit at a time) stirring constantly until it comes back together. Don't be discouraged if this doesn't happen immediately, as it's likely going to take some time.

While adding liquid is the simplest solution to fixing many a broken sauce, it doesn't always work. Fortunately, it's not your only option. One of the best ways to fix an egg-based sauce takes both time and effort, so you might only want to employ it if you absolutely need to save the sauce in question, rather than starting over. 

First, take a small amount of the broken sauce and put it in a bowl large enough to hold the entire batch of sauce. Next, add an egg yolk (just the yolk!) to the mixture and whisk it together until it emulsifies. Sounds easy so far, right?  Here's where the effort comes in: While whisking the mixture continuously and vigorously, slowly add in small amounts of the broken sauce. You have to go slow here — you're essentially getting the broken sauce to emulsify bit by bit until the entire mixture is saved.

Ideally adding a bit of liquid will quickly save your sauce. But if it doesn't, hopefully, one of these methods will work. And if none of them do... it's time to start from scratch.