The Right Way To Blend The Flavor Of Shallots Seamlessly Into Red Wine Sauce

To finish off an array of dishes, any given chef or home cook might turn to a secret weapon: A flavorful red wine sauce. Oftentimes, the sauce is carefully crafted in a saucepan before it's spooned on top of dishes like a pan-seared steak. It's not incredibly difficult to pull off a red wine pan sauce, but it does take a bit of patience and technique. Then, of course, there is an array of ingredients to amp up the red wine sauce to really impress guests, including some shallots.

Shallots offer a mildly sweet flavor and mellow onion-like taste to a variety of dishes, including tonight's red wine sauce. The key to making sure the shallots provide a balanced flavor is to saute the ingredient. If you simply toss in raw shallots and don't cook them through, you risk too strong a flavor. And if you overcook them, the sauce might have a burnt aroma or taste. Trust me — it's a technique that I was taught during my studies at culinary school, where making a red wine pan sauce with shallots was a key lesson throughout my courses.

How to add shallots to a red wine sauce the right way — and the best dishes to spoon it on

To start, use the same pan that you cooked your meat in to take advantage of some of the leftover flavor. However, like they taught in culinary school, wipe out any excess oil first. You don't want large chunks of shallot in the sauce, so finely mince the aromatic. Next, heat a neutral oil in that saucepan over medium heat and saute the shallots until they're translucent.

When the shallots are sauteed, deglaze the pan with red wine, and scrape any of the brown bits from the bottom. Now, this is the tricky part: After the pan is deglazed, allow it to simmer until the wine is reduced by 50% to 60%. Next, add cold butter (yes, keep it in the fridge until it's time to use it), because as a chef taught me in culinary school, once you add butter, you can't go back. Then, melt the butter to finish the sauce.

Steak was the dish we practiced making the red wine pan sauce with in school, so try it with our oven to cast iron reverse sear steak recipe. The sauce with sauteed shallots also melds well with poultry, so cook our hot honey butter and Dijon grilled chicken recipe to balance out the spicy-and-sweet glaze. As a final option, replace the puree in our pan-seared pork chop recipe.

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