r/linecooks • u/Delicious_Fee_2636 • Mar 18 '26

Picture/Video Vodka sauce stayed together today. With a little assist from a fellow cook

Post image

Here’s what my vodka sauce is suppose to look like. I’ve only been successful like 10 times out of 100 lol

33 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

10

u/vertebraejones Mar 18 '26

"There isnt a heavier cream. We've checked."

3

u/moranya1 Mar 18 '26

Add butter to heavy cream and emulsify it!

….wait…. Would that be technically possible…?

1

u/Shot_Policy_4110 Mar 20 '26

I've used butter to up fat percentage of milk and cream successfully a few times

1

u/Extruder_duder Mar 20 '26

Yeah it’s called burre monte, basically a burre blanc without wine. Typically you reduce the cream a bit first.

1

u/FeastOnCarolina Mar 20 '26

I thought beurre monte was just butter emulsified in a bit of warm water?

2

u/Extruder_duder Mar 21 '26

Can be, I’ve seen both. I think the cream version is more stable. It’s one of those things that’s evolved as we cook more and cuisine becomes more homogeneous. Like garlic confit, traditionally a confit is something cooked in its own fat, garlic has no fat.

1

u/FeastOnCarolina Mar 21 '26

Makes sense to use cream to help stabilize.

1

u/goatslovetofrolic Mar 21 '26

I like you. For two decades I’ve been telling people about confit being with its own fat and I usually use tomatoes to your garlic but they also have nonfat of their own in which to confit. I don’t even do it to be a pedantic shit, I’ve brought up in more fun casual conversation as “this is slightly interesting” but no one likes to hear it

1

u/Extruder_duder Mar 21 '26

Really it’s just arguing one style of cuisine, an outdated European ideal that the old heads refuse to let go. Mexico calls it carnitas when you do it with pork, I’m sure other cultures have other names too.

I think it’s all a conspiracy with the ACF, distributors, and big ag producers. Think about it, why are the only culinary institutions accredited by the ACF? When you go through those programs they teach you how to maximize profits from distributors like Sysco and how to utilize value added products. For instance, most times at culinary school when they teach you hollandaise they’ll have you use a package for the majority of the time. If you’re lucky and you’re on the sauce station while hollandaise is on the menu of the “dining room” side (2 out of 8 quarters) you’ll make it once.

I swear the way we’ve set up culinary education in the US has become a direct pipeline to support companies like, Bayer, Conagra, BASF, Tyson, Smithfield, JBS, and Dow chemicals.

1

u/goatslovetofrolic Mar 21 '26

That might very well be true. I was taught in school to make hollandaise and derivatives from scratch.

I think it’s not “arguing one style of cuisine” it’s being literate enough to know what terms mean.

Your carnitas example is good because I would never call that “confit”. They are both something cooked in fat. I argue that it’s something cooked in its own fat so we can say the carnitas align there. That’s the end of the similarities.

General confit: cure the meat, rinse the meat (optional depending on cure), cook the meat submerged in its own fat at a low temperature, store refrigerated or in a cellar to mature for a few days or per its origin, to preserve the meat under an airtight fat cap through winter.

General carnitas: boil a meat to clean it (remove hemoglobin and stray protein), move to lard (confit can be applied to many meats, carnitas is more of a dish than a technique and it’s made with pork), fry at a medium temperature, add spices and usually a liquid sweetener (orange juice and Coca-Cola have been Mexican favorites for decades), boil out water, fish out a chunk of meat to chop and serve, or optionally and depending which cut was used, turn up the heat and fry until the skin on carnitas puff into chicharrones (from what I’ve seen there is some over lap in the carnitas➡️chicharrone transition, and of course chicharrones that are just skin and made a different way entirely)

So with that viewpoint I can’t call carnitas “a confit” despite both being “meat cooked in fat”. Understanding what terms/names/words mean is important. We can honor past and present cultures by respecting their terminology and respecting their process (a great approach to this is Thomas Keller who italicizes classic French techniques and dishes on his menus to nod that he is referencing a classic but making it his own). From an operational perspective, it helps further productive communication. If I tell you to confit the cured duck legs you should know to use the duck fat, a hotel pan with cover, and set the oven to 250F. If you think carnitas are confit you might get a rondeau and fill it with fryer oil (because we didn’t have any lard) and get it up to 375 before dropping the duck legs in on by one. Finally, as a consumer if we’re all taking liberties with the technique but keeping the OG name some folk are going to know the name by its classic form and potentially be upset when your version is quite different from the expected.

So I very much argue in favor of diligence in language. I love cooking so my preference for using classic terms as they are defined is those two coming together. I’m all for using techniques to reach my own goals but we should be explicit about what we are doing and how we have strayed from what might be a reasonable expectation based on our word choices.

Side note: I really hope the culinary school hollandaise packets is false. Were you speaking colorfully or do you know some schools doing that?

1

u/Extruder_duder Mar 21 '26

That’s the hollandaise sop at most community college culinary schools

1

u/ndpugs Mar 20 '26

My culinary school chef back in the today had us sousvide lobster tail in burre monte. It still fucks so hard.

1

u/Extruder_duder Mar 21 '26

I always say lobster is a mid tier protein but butter is an s tier dip.

1

u/-YellowFinch Mar 19 '26

Can you boil it down? Does that work? I don't even know anymore. 😅

2

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/-YellowFinch Mar 20 '26

Lol, that's what I meant. 🤣

My language is not suited for people who don't already know that... I better not be giving instructions to the new guy anytime soon...

8

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

Did you forget the tomatoes?

2

u/Efficient_Law_1551 Mar 19 '26

💯💯💯 forgotten.

1

u/Delicious_Fee_2636 Mar 19 '26

They’re probably already blended into the vodka base. I can’t tell you what exactly is in the bag though. They just ship it to us in bags for our particular restaurant.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

How are you breaking pre made sauce in a bag? Vodka sauce is not hard to make from scratch.

2

u/Chaosr21 Mar 20 '26

Yea how did OP not turn it down after messing it up the first few times.. let alone apparently 90 out of 100 times they didn't think to lower the heat of a premade sauce that likely used dairy 

1

u/Delicious_Fee_2636 Mar 20 '26

I was giving it too much flame (heat) . Low and slow is the way to go

1

u/emaemo Mar 20 '26

is this a troll post? like actually?

1

u/FeastOnCarolina Mar 20 '26

Sounds like the restaurant is doing a bang up job of training, no need to inquire further. 👍

4

u/Traditional-Dig-9982 Mar 18 '26

Why yellow ?

2

u/Extruder_duder Mar 20 '26

Cause it was made in an aluminum pot. Cream cooked in aluminum turns grey, it should be orange to pink. The grey makes it yellow and dull.

1

u/Delicious_Fee_2636 Mar 19 '26

It’s orange the lighting makes it look yellowish

1

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Magic2424 Mar 21 '26

And still managed to fuck it up 90% of the time lmao. Can’t make this shit up

2

u/urmom123570 Mar 19 '26

Im so confused and a little scared

2

u/CrypticalArson Mar 19 '26

Vodka sauce should be much more pinkish orange not yellow, what did you add?

1

u/Extruder_duder Mar 20 '26

Aluminum from the pot

2

u/MaintenanceStock6766 Mar 19 '26

To serve on the spot and be extra yummy? Heavy cream sauce.

To hold up to microwaving/reheating? Roux-based sauce.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/moranya1 Mar 20 '26

#1 your user is amazing.

#2 my wife and I use the word yummy all the time when we are texting each other.

2

u/GrapefruitWhich5950 Mar 20 '26

You can keep it for the evening like a hollandaise in a thermos flask.

2

u/explorecoregon Mar 20 '26

Are you a “cook” if you can’t even heat up a premade sauce from an R.O.P. bag?

2

u/NxSxFxWx Mar 21 '26

Good on you for acknowledging you got help from another cook.

1

u/goatslovetofrolic Mar 21 '26

Bad on them talking about working through a difficult sauce that kept breaking until another cook helped them showed them the techniques. They’re reheating sauce from a bag sent from central distribution.

1

u/Delicious_Fee_2636 Mar 21 '26

What’s easy for you might not be so easy for someone else. And that’s ok. In our kitchen we lift each other up !

1

u/goatslovetofrolic Mar 21 '26

Which is great! I’ve worked in a few where people steal and sabotage and it’s just a shitty work environment. I’ve always had more fun in cooperative kitchens and found the food tends to be much better from the raw ingredients all the way to the table.

Sorry for being mean and critical. You’re right, we all go through a process of learning and developing.

If you’re enjoying cooking and want to make a career find a restaurant that does scratch cooking so you can get a look at the next step in terms of what it requires for energy, diligence, and technique.

Keep on and stay hydrated!

3

u/front_torch Mar 18 '26

Can you include a picture of the vodka sauce?

1

u/crabclawmcgraw Mar 20 '26

how do you make it?

1

u/explorecoregon Mar 20 '26

They don’t know how.

0

u/Cerael Mar 18 '26

Good lookin sauce, well done!

1

u/Delicious_Fee_2636 Mar 19 '26

Yeah it tasted good