Say Goodbye To Greasy Sauces With One Easy Hack

Have you ever wondered what our cooking would look like without sauces? I, for one, shudder to consider this alternate reality. As a nation, we have a bit of a sauce obsession, and who among us isn't right there in the crowd? Give me any easy sauce recipe to try, and I'll gladly go out of my way to create a dish to eat it with rather than the other way around. If you're like me, you've whipped up your fair share of sauces before, and the same common sauce maker's problems have probably vexed you. Sauce separation and breakage are the stuff of nightmares to us, along with the ever-present threat of an oily sauce. But did you know you can solve your grease woes with ice and a ladle?

Once you've got your sauce cooked up, all you need to do is fill a metal ladle's scoop with ice and allow the back of the cold ladle to skim the top. Move it evenly across the surface, and the oil will stick to your ladle almost like magic. Once you've collected enough oil and fat to cover the ladle, just wipe it clean with a paper towel. Repeating this step, you can skim your sauce as many times as you need, pulling grease away with each pass.

I said, "like magic," but there's no actual hocus pocus Houdiniry happening in the kitchen. This hack works to de-grease your sauces through scientific principles. When your ice-cold ladle touches the hot, greasy liquid, it causes the fat molecules to solidify just enough to stick to the ladle's surface. Once those fatty particles get stuck, they solidify all the way and stick completely. This lets you pass the ladle through the liquid and attract more fat molecules like a magnet.

A metal ladle is pertinent if you want this hack to work since metal is the best cold conductor. You can't just dunk your ladle into your sauces and expect it to attract the fat particles, either; moving the ladle around is a must. Armed with these tips, you can use this hack to successfully de-grease everything from brown butter and sage sauces to your favorite upgraded jarred pasta sauce. Just take care: Some of the flavor is in the grease, so you don't want to strip all of it away. You just want to remove enough to keep your dining guests from sporting that post-meal greasy dinner lip gloss we all know and loathe.