basic red wine steak sauce?

A classic is to deglaze with some cab, then melt-in a little blue cheese.

I can't give you a recipe for the cabernet & blue cheese sauce cuz I just eyeball it as needed. At a guess, I'd say about three ounces of wine and a couple of tablespoons of the cheese.

Here, however, is a recipe for a butter-thickened made-to-order red wine sauce, from James Peterson's encyclopedic Sauces.

steak, lamb chops, pork chops or the like, enough for two servings
vegetable oil or redered fat, as needed
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup brown stock
1 1/2 oz butter, cut into cubes
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the meat in the oil or fat in a heavy-bottomed saute pan. When the meat is done, transfer it to a plate and discard the burned fat in the saute pan.

Pour the red wine into the saute pan and reduce it by half.

Add the brown stock and reduce until only 6 tablespoons remain.

Whisk in the butter and bring the sauce to a simmer for about 10 seconds.

If desired, adjust the thickness of the sauce by thinning with stock or thickening with more butter. Adjust the seasonings.

I'll probarbly get slated for this, but, despite what "celebrity chefs" tell you. you can cook with wine you wouldnt drink. I've a jar of wine reduction, made from 2 bottles I absolutely hated. from 2 bottles i got about a cup. It keeps well and after the steaks -are ready, I add a splosh to deglaze, another splosh of water. Lots and lots of black pepper and at the last minute a dollop of creme fraiche. You may need to add a pinch of sugar... Taste and see

bughut - I reckon some celeb chefs are sponsored by the wine companies ;)

I cook with :o cask wines if I have no good leftover bits of bottles- after all - we sometimes use vinegar in sauces - that's what some wines remind me of, but for some reason (someone will know the science of this, not me) it just works.

I reduce some red to about a third, scraping up the fond, add some beefstock - about equal to the amount of red - then reduce again till lovely and syrupy.


P.S. Oh rats! Want me some now..... with rare rib-eye and buttery mash - ahhh!

I have a friend whose family ran a vinyard in montalcino, and they produced the famous Brunello di Montalcino wine. They had cases of it in the house. But they would buy the little boxes of "tavernello" which is cheapo wine that comes in cartons (they would buy the small juice-box size) to use in cooking when a white wine was needed.

Our friend eventually left the family business because he just couldn't deal with the snobby people who would buy the wine!

I'd be a very good friend of a person in that circumstance! Brunello...mmmm......! I've had it only once, but it was truly a great wine.

I think what they really mean is the so called "cooking wine" which has added salt. Just not very good wine is drinkable even if you wouldn't drink it if you had the choice.

I have to disagree, Jock. Cooking wine, as you say, is highly salted. And usually starts with something third rate to begin with.

There are two reasons that cooking wine even exists. The first is the American prohibition period. By salting the wine it became a culinary item, not a potable. The second is that cooking wine can be sold in markets that otherwise do not have liquor licenses.

What cooks and chefs mean is that if the wine you choose isn't worth drinking on it's own, then it isn't worth cooking with.

When you cook anything, you want to use the freshest and best quality ingredients you can find. Why should the wine be any different?

That said, there are a great many drinkable wines that don't cost an arm and a leg. We're not big wine drinkers here. But, even so, I want something that I could drink if I wanted to. Most of the wines we use are less than ten bucks a bottle.

Another valid reason is going back to when I first started in the 50s and 60s, all the oldtimers used to drink, so even if given a good bottle of wine the owners or management poured salt in it so the help would not drink it. Which when it was not salted I saw a lot of it consummed by the cooks.

Charles Shaw wines, aka Two Buck Chuck, are wonderful for cooking, good for mixng (sangria, spritzers, etc), but not what you'd call a wonderful drinking wine. They're not just "less than $10," they're actually $2.

Also, whenever a dry white wine is called for consider a decent dry vermouth. Vermouths are herbaceous, and that quality should be why you ultimately use or reject it.

BDL

Good tip about the vermouth, BDL.

Other options to white wine would include the gamut of Sherries, from very dry to cream, and sake.

What I actually meant was that... The £15 bottle of Borolo we're drinking with our meal doesnt have to be going into it. I see that as snobbery on the part of celeb chefs... Whats wrong with deglazing with £5 plonk. Maybe my palate isnt a sophisticated as theirs, but it tastes good to me

If I'm doing Chorizo in red wine for tapas, Could ANYONE tell me I'd used an inferior( less than classy) wine