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Red Wine Reduction

by Matt Kennard

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Shallot, garlic, wine reduced by half, stock reduced again, strained, then mounted with cold butter off the heat. The one sauce that makes a steak look like somebody meant it.

Serves
4
Total
35 min
Simmered
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Four stages and each one has a job. Aromatics for depth, wine for acid and tannin, stock for body, butter for gloss and texture.

Skip the stock and you get something sharp and thin that tastes mostly of wine. Skip the straining and it's gritty with spent shallot. Mount it over heat and it breaks. Those are the only three ways this goes wrong.

If it's not right

  • Broken or greasy: mounted over heat, or the butter wasn't cold.
  • Harsh and tannic: not reduced enough, or no stock.
  • Thin: either reduction was cut short. Keep going uncovered.
  • Gritty: not strained.
  • Flat: salt, at the end, and more than feels right.

What it goes on

Steak, obviously. Also king trumpet mushroom steaks, where it turns a side into a main, and anything roasted that needs something glossy beside it. A spoonful over a seared duck breast or a lamb chop does the same job.

Ingredients

4

Method

  1. **Shallots in the pan butter** over medium heat until soft and translucent, 4 or 5 minutes. Don't brown them.

  2. **Garlic for a minute,** until it smells like something.

  3. **Wine in.** Bring to a simmer and reduce by half. Six to eight minutes, and it should smell sweet rather than sharp by the end, which is the alcohol gone.

  4. **Stock in,** and reduce again until it coats a spoon and a finger drawn through it leaves a clean line. Another five to eight minutes.

  5. **Strain it** through a fine sieve, pressing the solids to get everything out, then discard them. This is what makes it glossy rather than rustic.

  6. **Mount it.** Off the heat, back in a clean pan or the same one off the flame, whisk in the cold butter a cube at a time, waiting for each to disappear before the next. It thickens and goes shiny as you go.

  7. Salt and pepper, and taste. It will want more salt than you expect after the reduction.

Goes with

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