How to Make Restaurant Quality Madeira Sauce in 20 Minutes

"A good base lightly flavored with Madeira will produce one of the greatest of all sauces." Raymond Sokolov, The Saucier's Apprentice

What Is Madeira Sauce?

Madeira sauce is a classic French brown sauce made with Madeira wine, peppercorns, and other essential ingredients.

It is a pepper sauce with Madeira wine added. It is served with beef and chicken, but in today's kitchens, you can serve it with almost anything.

A Little History Of Madeira Wine and Madeira Sauce

Let's start with Madeira, a wine from Portugal first made in the 1400s for export, especially to France, where it was part of "their daily diet." The Portuguese used Maderia wine to hold up to a ship's constant motion.

Winemakers added a little cane sugar and distilled alcohol during the fermentation process resulting in sweet to dry wine with a tannish color.

The old way of making classic Madeira sauce took many steps and an extremely long time.

Starting with a roux of butter and vegetables like onions, carrots, and celery; then add beef stock and other vegetables, including mushrooms and tomatoes, simmering, stirring, and skimming for hours, then pour through a fine strainer only to have the whole process start over again with the addition of Madeira wine.

By the winemakers were done, they ended up with an intensely flavorful Madeira sauce but may have been frustrated by the time invested in making the sauce.

Good news - I have a recipe using a commercial demi-glace product that cuts down the time to prepare this sauce to 20 minutes or less.

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Madeira Sauce Recipe

A Great Sauce Featuring Madeira Wine

Prep Time5 mins

Cook Time15 mins

Total Time20 mins

Course: Sauces

Cuisine: French

Keyword: Madeira, sauce

Servings: 1 cup

Ingredients

• 1 oz butter or ¼ stick
• 3 tablespoons shallots finely chopped
• ½ pound mushrooms white or crimini, sliced
• ½ teaspoon black cracked peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig fresh thyme ¼ teaspoon dried
• ¼ cup red wine
• ¾ cup Madeira wine
• 1 cup demi glace
• ¼ cup heavy cream optional
• salt and pepper to taste

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

• Heat a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Once hot, add butter and then the shallots.
• Sauté the shallots until translucent, about 2 minutes.
• Add the mushrooms and cook until they release their moisture and become tender. This should take about 3 minutes.
• Add the peppercorns, thyme and bay leave to the saucepan and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute.
• Now, add the red wine and reduce it by half. This could take 3 - 5 minutes.
• Add the Madeira wine and bring the sauce to a boil. When the wine comes to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer.
• Add the demi glace to the sauce and whisk until well blended.
• Add the optional heavy cream if you are using it. This will add some extra richness as well as calories.
• Reduce this sauce until it is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon.
• Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.
• Serve over your favorite meats and poultry.

Demi Glace

When it comes to making great sauces at home, the kind that will wow your family and friends, stock reductions make all the difference. Whether it's a pan sauce using chicken, beef, or fish stock that's reduced in the pan or starting with a prepared beef/chicken glaze, if you want to create a classic "restaurant quality" sauce, you need to start with a quality stock or glaze.

Making an outstanding stock at home is not hard to do, and I urge you all to start making your stocks. However, making a glaze like demi glace (veal/beef) or glace de poulet (chicken) is a lot more complicated and a job you may not want to tackle, or at least not that often.

If you want to learn more about demi glace, what it is, and how to make it at home, check out this demi-glace link. There are also some links to a few commercial products I've tried, which are good alternatives to preparing them at home.

Alternative - Madeira Peppercorn Sauce

For those who love a nice "au Poivre" sauce or peppercorn sauce, you can quickly adapt the Madeira sauce recipe above to make your own. Substitute the ½ teaspoon of black cracked peppercorns with one teaspoon of drained green peppercorns in brine, coarsely chopped.

You can leave the mushrooms or exclude them depending on your preferences, and now you have a delightful Madeira Peppercorn Sauce. This sauce goes incredibly well with game meats like elk or venison.

My Top Choices for Demi Glace

Online Sources: Demi Glace

For those of you who do not want to make demi glace at home.

Demi glace is the most important ingredient for making classic "restaurant quality" brown sauces. All the great French brown sauces use demi glace. But it can also be used in soups, stews and braises. It's something you can make at home but it takes a long, long time to do it right and if you make one mistake, it can easily be ruined. Lucky for us, there are now some great sources for commercial grade demi glace and I want to share a few with you now. Everyone has their preferences so I suggest you give each a try to find out which product you like best. 

---

Savory Choice's Demi Glace

Ready in minutes, Savory Choice beef demi glace allows home chefs to deliver impressive restaurant-quality meals quickly and cost-effectively. Professional chefs typically take at least 24 hours to prepare this traditional reduction sauce by simmering stock, vegetables, wine and spices to a velvety consistency.

 

Rich, natural, gluten free and Trans fat free Savory Choice demi glace opens up a world of new possibilities for exquisite home-cooked meals. Use on steaks, lamb and pork dishes, or a base for stews, soups and gravies. For braising pot roasts and short ribs, add contents of pouch to ½ gallon of water and simmer in crock pot until meat is fork tender. Convenience has never tasted so luxurious.

 

---

More Than Gourmet's Demi Glace Gold

One of my first commercial demi glace products and still one of my favorites. For almost 25 years, More Than Gourmet has been the gold standard for flavor and quality when it comes to sauces, stock, and soup. This product comes in 1 pound tubs and 1.5 ounce pucks and even bigger sizes if you are a commercial establishment. I like buying 6 of the pucks at a time unless I'm doing a big party and need the pounder.

Some of My Favorite Sauce Recipes