A few years ago I tried to make base sauce and found that I always seemed to burn the spices. I see there are a lot of different techniques to these base sauces and as a new guy was wondering if there was a way around ever having to expose directly the spices to hot oil. Which of the many recipes is the most ?foolproof??

If the spices always need to be fried, how can I stop them getting that rough, ?sawdust? flavour?

Cheers.