Andy Cross, The Denver PostBill St. John Sauce isn’t soup, but it often boils down to that. Wet cooking (braising) in two popular modern cooking appliances — the Instant Pot and a slow cooker such as Crock-Pot — tends to render sauces that, as sauces, are thin and wan. Such may make for delicious soups, but aren’t, as a rule, a toothsome nap for the meat and vegetables. Even standard, oven-made braises often render liquids that would profit from some oomph come gravy time. To the rescue comes a raft of ways to thicken those liquids into sauces on all fours. Powders and flours: Cornstarch, arrowroot, common wheat flour and the flours or powders made from potato, tapioca, chickpea — to name but a few — long have been used to thicken cooking liquids.