Shallot and red wine is the simplest steakhouse sauce there is: one shallot, a glass of red wine, butter. It's made in the pan the meat just cooked in, while it rests, and it takes four minutes.
Ingredients, for two
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
- 120 ml red wine
- 60 ml beef stock
- 1 sprig of thyme
- 20 g very cold butter, diced
Before the sauce: a properly seared steak
The sauce starts from the fond, the brown layer stuck to the bottom after searing. Without it you have reduced wine, not a sauce. How to build it is here — searing a steak at home. Take the meat out, put it on a plate, leave the pan as it is.
The sauce, in 4 steps
- Medium heat, the shallot for one minute in the leftover fat. It should turn translucent.
- Off the heat, pour in the wine, then back on the heat. Scrape the fond with a wooden spoon and add the thyme.
- Reduce by a third, add the stock, then reduce by half again.
- Off the heat, the cold butter, a cube at a time, swirling the pan: the sauce turns glossy and coats the spoon. Remove the thyme, taste, salt.
The detail that does everything: cold butter
The butter should come out of the fridge at the last moment. Cold, it blends into the reduction and binds it: that's what gives the glossy texture. Soft, or added on the heat, it simply melts, and the sauce turns greasy instead of smooth.
Which wine
A red you'd drink, nothing more. No need for a good bottle: reducing concentrates everything, flaws included. Avoid very oaky or very tannic wines, which turn bitter as they reduce. A Gamay, a Pinot Noir or a Côtes-du-Rhône work very well.
And always pour it off the heat: on a very hot pan, the alcohol can catch fire.
If it goes wrong
It's sharp or harsh. The wine didn't reduce enough. Alcohol and acidity go with the reduction: give it another minute before the stock.
It's greasy, not glossy. The butter wasn't cold enough, or the pan was still on the heat.
It's bitter. The fond burnt instead of browning. On a black base, better to wash the pan — the difference between browned and burnt.
What it goes with
Ribeye, flank, hanger steak, duck breast. It's the classic French sauce for a steak. For other meats and fish: which sauce with which meat.
The other pan sauces
Same method, different liquid, different finish: peppercorn sauce for the same steak, and eight more — wholegrain mustard, lemon and caper, quick beurre blanc, gorgonzola… — with quantities and the “which sauce with what” chart, in the 10 pan sauces in 3 minutes booklet.
And for a fond that really builds: the pan we film with, 304 stainless with no coating, with the 25-recipe book free.
