Deglazing the Sauté Pan and Making a Sauce

The sauté pan used for cooking steaks is deglazed by first pouring out and discarding any fat that was used for browning the steak. Finely chopped aromatic vegetables such as shallots or garlic are sometimes stirred in the pan for a few seconds while it’s still hot so they release their flavor before liquid is added. At times, liquid is added directly. The liquid can be water or broth, but very often it is wine—red or white wine or fortified wine such as port or Madeira— that is boiled for a few seconds to cook off its alcohol and stirred in the pan with a wooden spoon or whisk to dissolve the juices in the wine. If I’m cooking a steak for myself at home, I’ll often leave it at that—I’ll deglaze the pan with about ½ cup [125 ml] of red wine, boil the wine down to a couple of tablespoons, and spoon it over the steak. If I feel like having something fancier, I’ll add some highly reduced broth that I’ve either made myself or bought. If I have meat drippings from a leftover roast, I use those. I then boil down the sauce until it thickens to the consistency of a light syrup. (Broth contains gelatin that gets syrupy when concentrated, and some store-bought products contain flour, which also thickens the sauce.) At this point you can season the sauce and serve it as is, or go further and add chopped herbs (parsley, chervil, tarragon, or chives), mushrooms (wild or cultivated, sautéed with a little fresh thyme), green peppercorns, truffles, little cubes of foie gras, crushed juniper berries, slices of beef marrow (for bordelaise), and so on. As the coup de grace, I may swirl in a little butter to give the sauce a velvety consistency and to soften and help meld the flavors.