Sauce’s and Butters
Sauce’s and Butters
When thekitchenman needs to add some sizzle to the steak he uses a range of different sauces and flavoured butters to get that optimum level of good taste. These next recipes are the ones that I use and once you add these to your cooking repertoire your next meal at home will be taken to another level.
Onion Sauce This is a béchamel sauce flavored with sweet onion. It is a lovely silky sauce for delicate-flavored foods and perfect for baked-in-cream dishes.
4 cups chopped or sliced sweet onions Salt
5 tbs butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
Freshly ground pepper
Stir onions and ½ teaspoon salt into butter, cover and cook to wilt and tenderize, approximately 20-25 minutes. Stir in flour and cook for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Puree in a blender. Season to taste and reheat.
Simple Shallot Sauces
Deglazing the cooking juices from a sauté pan with a bit of liquid gives you a simple, flavorful sauce. Adding shallots makes the sauce even more delicious.
For Beef
1-2 Tb finely chopped shallots
1/4 cup dry vermouth
3/4 cup beef broth
2 Tb butter (optional)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
After sautéing steaks or sirloin beef patties or slices of calves’ liver, remove the meat from the pan and pour off all but 1 teaspoon of the fat. Add shallots and sauté for 1 minute. Pour on the vermouth and scrape up any cooking juices in the bottom of die pan. Add broth and boil until sauce reduces and thickens almost to syrup. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the butter, if you like, to enrich it. Season to taste with salt and pepper and pour over the meat. (Serves 2)
With Red Wine: Use half broth and half red wine.
With Cream: Omit the butter. Reduce the broth to a thick glaze and pour in ½ cup heavy cream. Reduce by simmering until thickened.
With Cognac: Pour cognac in the pan, flame, add butter, and reduce to a thick glaze. Add 1/2 cup heavy cream and boil until thickened. This is particularly good with sautéed steak that has had green peppercorns pressed into die sides Note: Meat pans may be simply deglazed by pouring off the fat, sautéing the shallots, adding liquid to scrape up the congealed flavourful pan juices, and simmering down to intensify flavor.
For Poultry
2 tb finely chopped shallots
1/4 cup dry vermouth
3/4 cup poultry stock, such as chicken, squab, or duck
2 tbs unsalted butter
Remove the poultry from the pan, pour off fat, add shallots, and sauté for 1 minute. Add vermouth and scrape up the pan juices. Add the stock and boil until thickened and almost syrupy. Remove from the heat and beat in the butter.
Shallot Butter Sauce
This is an excellent quick sauce when you lack pan juices. Pour over sliced London broil or English-cut roast beef.
¼ cup butter
½ cup chopped shallots
Heat butter in a deep saucepan. Let it get brown (but not black) and remove the pan from the heat. Immediately drop in the shallots. The hot butter will cook them. Take care; the cold moist shallots in the hot butter will cause it to bubble way up. Serve over sliced beef.
Onion and Garlic Butters
Shallots, scallions, chives, and garlic added to unsalted butter make an easy and tasty garnish for broiled fish or meat. At the restaurant, we would garnish steaks with a shallot butter, use garlic butter for broiled sea bass, and add escargot butter (so called because it is the classic French butter to serve on snails) to clams and mussels. Simply beat softened butter with the ingredients and chill in a bowl for later use, or make a roll with wax paper aluminum foil as follows:
The technique is easy: once the butter is softened sufficiency to beat, mix in whatever seasonings or herbs you like. Then, with a spatula, form a long tube of the butter approximately 1 1/2 inches round down the first third of a sheet of aluminum foil lined with waxed paper. Fold one edge of the foil over the butter and roll the butter across the remaining foil. Once the foil is rolled around the butter, twist the foil ends in opposite directions and refrigerate till needed.