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 the real demi-glace. There's no way I'm going to make demi-glace from scratch so I use a product that I learned about years ago called Demi Glace Gold. I found this product years ago at the Fancy Food Show in New York City and have be using it along with their other stock reductions ever since.
I would say if there is one product on the market that elevated the way I cook, it is this Demi Glace Gold. 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 nice 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.
You may be interested in my article, Making Incredible Sauces at Home that describes my 5 Step Method for Preparing Professional Quality Brown Sauces.
So I'm sharing my secret with you. Demi-Glace Gold!
Are there other demi glace products on the market? Yes and I'm sure some of them are very good but read the labels. If the list of ingredients contains a lot of stuff that's hard to pronounce, stay away. You don't want to be eating a lot of salt, sugar and chemicals. You want the real thing.
If you find a great product besides Demi Glace Gold, go for it and please let me know about it. I am always open to learning about new products. There are a couple of demi glace products on the market that I hear are excellent. The problem is they are fresh, expensive and require overnight shipping.
Demi Glace Gold does not have to be refrigerated until it is opened and then has a 6 month to 1 year shelf life. I learned all about it and where to order it at GatewayGourmet.com.
You can get 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 want to try their chicken based demi-glace called Jus de Poulet Lie Gold for lighter sauces or lobster stock (Glace de Fruits de Mer) for seafood sauces like Seafood Sauce for Pan Seared Fish.
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
1 oz. Demi Glace Gold
5 oz. water
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.
And while that is reducing, reconstitute the Demi Glace Gold in the water. I like to combine the Demi and water in a pyrex measuring cup and heat it up in the microwave. You can also reconstitute them on the stove in a small sauce pan if you like.When the wine is reduced, add the reconstituted 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.
RELATED TOPICS
Grilled Steak with Peppercorn Sauce
Steak with Wild Mushroom Sauce
Making Incredible Sauces at Home
How to Make Incredible Pan Sauces
How to Make Restaurant Quality Sauces
