My Clever French Trick for Making Vegetables Taste Ridiculously Good (Works Every Time!)

There’s a song in the musical Waitress that simply repeats: “sugar, butter, flour” when talking about baking pies. In my kitchen, I’m singing “soy sauce, butter, garlic,” and it’s about gettin’ saucy with my vegetables. This triple threat of ingredients makes any vegetables taste incredible — even craveable — and it wows people at dinner parties every time.

The sauce ratio is a little bit of soy sauce, a bigger bit of garlic, and the biggest bit of butter. Actually, the biggest ingredient is water. Yes, H₂0, the same one you fill your Owala insulated water bottle with. 

I will preface this all by saying there is a simple-as-all-heck way to add soy sauce, butter, and garlic to your vegetables. Cook the garlic in butter, add the vegetables, and then toss with soy sauce. I’m sure you’ve already done that, or you could figure it out if someone listed those three ingredients. I take things a step further by turning them into a luscious sauce — but I promise it will still only take about 7 minutes (until heaven).

There’s a simple French sauce called beurré monte that is just butter and water emulsified together into a creamy, dreamy, luxurious situation. So I thought … why not do that, but use soy sauce instead of just water for extra flavor? (Lately I’ve been using Sempio’s Jin Gold, one of Korea’s best-selling soy sauces that is aromatic and rich without being overpoweringly salty.) 

This allows you to have an indulgent vegetable experience instead of just making your vegetables glisten (and sometimes feel greasy or heavy). Instead, 1 cup of water, half a stick (4 tablespoons) of butter, and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce transforms into a magically delicious sauce, no luck needed. It’s foolproof as long as you whisk vigorously.

Before making the sauce, I steam, roast, or sauté vegetables (in a bit of olive oil or neutral oil, if needed, but remember the butter sauce is coming so gild your lilies!) and simply season them with a pinch o’ salt. I set them aside or let them keep warm in the oven or with a lid on the stove. Add 1 cup of water and at least four cloves of minced garlic to a medium skillet and set to medium heat. Stick with me — the garlic will slowly steep and infuse the water so the entire sauce has a gentle garlicky flavor. It’s like a concentrated super quick garlic stock that just needs about 2 minutes simmering, or until your kitchen has a little eau de garlique. (Smells like garlic, and teen spirit.) 

Next add 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and then start adding 1 tablespoon of cold unsalted butter at a time, whisking in until it has melted and dissipated into the sauce base. I typically only use salted butter, but if you have unsalted already, use it so you can control the end saltiness with the soy sauce. (You can absolutely make this with salted butter, too. Just know that every soy sauce’s salinity is different so you may have to add salt to balance things out, and it’s better to be undersalted than oversalted.)

Okay, back to the butter! Continue the process for the other remaining 3 tablespoons of butter, whisking them in one by one. It should thicken slightly as you whisk in each pat of butter, so whistle while it works its magic. Make sure the sauce only bubbles, never boiling, or it can break — aka separating the emulsion you made of oil and water — and immediately shut off the heat after you finish whisking in the last bit of butter. It will thicken a bit as it stands, if you can stand to wait and dive in. 

Don’t be tempted to eat it straight off the spoon, as it should be a bit on the saltier side to flavor all of your plain veggies. If you must dip in early, just slide your fingertip through the sauce on the back of the spoon. It should leave a clean line. Yep. You’ve got perfect sauce-scocity.

Now’s the best part: immediately upgrading (almost) any veggie imaginable. You can drizzle cooked vegetables with this sauce or mix it in so they’re fully saturated in garlic goodness. Add cracked black pepper if you’re into that. Dive in face-first. Repeat whenever you want vegetables.

I have tried this with at least a dozen vegetables over the years, and my favorites are broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, green beans, any mushroom, and snow peas. A ton of kale, chard, bok choy, or spinach can taste great all wilted down if you want to get your greens in, and all root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, squash) are excellent when sauced right. 

Proteins like chicken, pork, or shrimp play nice with this soy-butter-garlic sauce, but the point of making this for me is that it can get me to eat a giant bowl of vegetables without missing the meat. I can be satisfied and full on veggies alone, amped up with a fabulous silky sauce. Fair warning, because I tried it: Don’t use it on tofu! Tofu gets overwhelmed by this amount of butter and luxuriousness, but sautéed seitan or plant-based sausages could be good for bulking up protein in a vegetabowl dinner, with or without a base carb like rice or noods.

The only downside to this sauce — miracles can’t happen, no matter how much Mia Thermopolis tried to tell us — is that it needs to be made when you’re going to eat it. As chefs say, à la minute. Because it’s an emulsion, it can break or congeal after refrigeration and reheating. You can keep it over a low flame to keep warm if you are serving a crowd, as this recipe can scale up, even quadruple, easily … it just takes more whisk for more reward. 

And because it’s so quick, it’s low effort and high reward for a quick lunch upgrade or surprisingly easy dinner party back pocket trick. Adapt it with more spices, your favorite hot sauce, or a bit of chopped pepper if you like it spicy. You can add any ingredients your heart desires, but I like its simple luxury. But go forth and choose your own sauce adventure — it’s guaranteed to be soy delicious.

Buy: Sempio Jin Gold F3 Soy Sauce, $4.69 for 16.9 ounces at Instacart

What are you using to spice up your vegetables? Tell us about it in the comments below.