A recent question got me wondering: are there any cuisines that rarely, or never, use sauces?
There's many cuisines that are very sauce-centric: French, Italian, Thai, Szechuan, Mexican, etc. But are there cuisines that use sauces so rarely that you could open a restaurant and not have one sauce on the menu, without really going out of your way to do so? I can't think of one.
Let's include some definitions to make this question answerable:
- Sauce: a liquid, puree, or paste that adds flavor to a dish or seasons other ingredients
- Cuisine: the complete foodways of a cultural or regional group (not just a specific dish or specific type of specialty restaurant)
Let's also limit this to "cuisines that you could conceivably open a restaurant for"; while there are definitely groups of people who live in remote areas, don't trade, and thus don't have any basis for sauces, I'm asking for culinary traditions that have chosen to turn away from them instead.
Are there any? Can you name one or two?
Best Answer
Pilav-and-kabab-centric cuisines, such as Afghan, Uzbek, Tadjik seem sauceless. Of course I cannot prove that they don't have them, but I have never seen one.
Armenian (and perhaps Turkish) cuisine also deserve close inspection.