The Secret to Great Sauces is Great Ingredients
If you ask my daughters what is their favorite meal and they will tell you, "Daddy's steak with sauce!"
I love that my little girls enjoy a good cut of beef served with a mushroom brown sauce made with real Demi Glace so I make it for them every week or two. Served with steamed brocolli and rice pilaf, it is meal I can put together in less than 30 minutes, my wife and I love and the kids will finish.
The steak takes no more than 8 to 10 minutes on the grill or pan seared, the steamed brocolli about 8 , the rice pilaf about 10 minutes and the sauce 12 to 15 minutes. I cheat with the rice pilaf and use a product made by Near East. My oldest daughter loves it.
The secret to making the sauce is real demi-glace.
What is Demi Glace?
Demi Glace is a rich brown sauce prepared by combining brown sauce and Espagnole sauce, one of the four mother sauces designated by the great 19th century chef Antonin Carême's. It is essentially the nucleous of all the great classic brown sauces and is used around the world in restaurants to prepare sauces.
The problem for home cooks is it takes lots of bones, lots of attention and lots of time to prepare demi-glace properly and most home cooks, including myself, don't have the time to prepare it from scratch. Lucky for us there are now some great demi glace products on the market including one of my favorites, Demi Glace Gold.
I was first introduced to this product many years ago at the Fancy Food Show in New York City and have be using it along with their other stock reductions ever since. Since then I have been finding and working with some other demi glace manufacturers and have found them to also be very good especially at a much more affordable price.
So I'm sharing my secret with you. Demi-Glace !
I would say if there is one ingredient that elevated the way I cook, it is this demi glace. I can't tell you how many meals I've cooked for friends and family and they can't believe how great the sauce is. Doesn't matter if you spend hours working on all the other parts of the meal, the comments are always about the sauce and how did I make it and can I make this at home in my kitchen too.
The fact is, anyone with a little practice can grill or saute up a steak or a chicken breast. The real challange to me is making an incredible home made sauce that is good as one I may be served in a high end restaurant. If I can do that, the meal is a success. The problem for most home cooks is they don't have the right ingredients like demi glace because they are hard to find and even harder to make yourself.
Demi Glace Gold does not have to be refrigerated until it is opened and then has a 6 month to 1 year shelf life. You can prepare about 16 sauces out of each pound unless I'm cooking for friends. 1 ounce Demi Glace Gold reconstitutes into about 5 ounces of demi-glace which is perfect for making a sauce for my wife and I and two daughters.
If you want to learn more about it, how to use it, along with lots of sauce recipes with it, go to GatewayGourmet.com. They also sell an eCookbook called, How to Make Restaurant Quality Sauces at Home...in 20 minutes or less. It is filled with recipes for making classic and everyday sauces that you can make in less than 20 minutes using these stock reductions and glace.
You may also be interested in my article, Making Sauces at Home that describes my 5 Step Method for Preparing Professional Quality Brown Sauces.
Demi Glace Gold is now being sold by Amazon at Amazon.com and it's about 35% cheaper than most sites I found it on. And if you are part of their Amazon Prime program, you can have it shipped FREE Two-Day Shipping. That's a deal.
More Than Gourmet's Demi Glace Gold
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More Affordable Demi glace Products
Up until recently, I have only been using Demi Glace Gold because I like that it is all natural, no MSG, has a long shelf life and in my opinion, a great value for what you get. Someone else might say, I would love to cook with it but I can't afford it. Is there something else on the market that's good but not quite so expensive?
Yes there is and I have found two products that may not be all natural and have some modified this and autolyzed that, but they make a very good demi glace and cost a fraction of Demi Glace Gold. I am still a fan of the Gold, but I don't have any reservations about recommending you give a try to some of the new products on the market. In fact, I encourage you to try them all and see what fits your budget and tastes and decide for yourself.
Two more affoardable demi-glace products are :
Demi Glace Gold is our favorite commercial product but it may be too expensive for everyone. So we have been finding alternative demi products that are less expensive but still very good quality. These include:
More Affordable Alternative $$
Master's Touch Custom Culinary |
How to Make a Simple but Delicious Sauce for Steak That Even Your Kids Will Eat?
Ingredients:
1 shallot, minced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup red wine or Port
Freshly Ground Pepper
5 oz. Demi Glace
How to Make at Home:
Heat a small sauce pan over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of
the butter and when hot add the minced shallot.
Saute the shallot until translucent about 2 minutes depending on the
pan and your stove. What I mean by this is everybody uses different
quality pans and different types of stove tops. Both will have a great
effect on how quickly something will cook so it is very difficult to give
exact times.
Remove the pan from the stove and add the wine or Port. Return the pan to the stove and add some freshly ground pepper. How much you add will depend on your individual tastes.
Reduce the wine until there is just an essence left, practically nothing. If you are worried that I am giving alcohol to my girls, don't. It all burns off while you are reducing it.
When the wine is reduced, add the demi glace to the pan.
Simmer on low heat until the sauce is thick enough to coat a spoon or to a consistency you prefer. Some people have told me they like it less thick.
To finish the sauce and give it extra sheen and flavor, add the remaining
tablespoon of butter. If you are watching your calories, you may want to
skip this step.
That's it, that simple and you won't believe how great it is. It is a sure winner and I know you will be pleased.
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