Red Wine Reduction Sauce is a miracle sauce as it can turn a simple roast meat into a restaurant-quality dish! And though this is not a traditional Greek recipe but more of a French-inspired one. The spices and flavor of this sauce will be reminding you strongly of Stifado (Greek beef stew with red wine + tomato sauce + shallots).
Ingredients To Make Red Wine Sauce
The basic ingredients to make red wine sauce are wine (usually dry, more on this in the text below), onions or shallots, butter to thicken it, and meat juices to flavor it.
The flavorings in this red wine sauce are sweet spices such as cloves, and allspice as well as thyme and bay leaves. Other ingredients used in this recipe are garlic, honey, and Demi-Glace sauce instead of the meat juices.
What Type Of Wine To Use
Dry red wines with a fruity taste are used mostly to make a red wine sauce. But if you ask me it all comes down to personal preference. And also the meat that will accompany the sauce. For example, a roasted game such as duck would go extremely well with a red wine sauce made of sweet or semi-sweet wine.
Now I don't mind so much for grape varieties as long as it's a quality red wine. It doesn't have to be the most expensive to make a good sauce. Things to look for when choosing a wine to make a red wine reduction sauce:
- The age of the wine and how rich it is in tannins. Tannins are what give the wine the deep red color. The richer it is in tannins the stronger it is. So go for something mild here unless you want a very bloody-looking sauce that's very strong-flavored.
- The flavorings in the wine. And here you can play it top chef and match every little flavor that's within the wine with the dish you are planning to serve. For example, a Cabernet Sauvignon wine is usually flavored with notes of wood and tobacco which means this wine is ideal to serve with any grilled or bbq steak for instance to match their smoking flavor.
Adding Demi Glace Or Meat Juices
Demi Glace sauce is one of the best things you can add to a red wine sauce. As it will give it an intense flavor, deep color, and a beautifully glazy texture.
What's Demi-Glace Sauce? It's a beef stock that's cooked for many hours until it gets reduced to a thickened gelatinous sauce. It's very flavorful, full of collagen (which is what thickens it), and has a beautiful ruby red (or sometimes deeper color) because of the red wine and tomato paste it contains.
You can make Demi-Glace at home (though it takes lots of time to make), or buy some like this one.
Or use meat juices instead of Demi-Glace sauce to flavor the red wine sauce.
To Use Meat Juices Instead Of Demi-Glace Sauce:
- Place the pan you roasted or seared meat in, on the stove. Heat over medium heat. Add ½ teaspoon tomato paste.
- Cook the tomato paste for 1-2 minutes, stirring and scraping the pan with a wooden spoon.
- Pour 60 ml of hot water or stock into the pan. Stir well with the wooden spoon. Let the sauce bubble for 2 minutes then pass through a sieve. Use it instead of the Demi-Glace when the recipe below instructs to do so.
Serve It With
This sauce is great to serve with any meat. But goes perfectly with red meats such as beef, wild boar, duck, pork tenderloin, and venison. You can also serve it with chicken but I would add some dried mushrooms to the sauce as well for extra flavor.
Recipe
Red Wine Reduction Sauce With Spices
Ingredients
- 700 ml red wine
- 20 ml olive oil
- 250 grams / 8.8 oz red onions minced
- 2 large garlic cloves coarsely chopped
- 2 ½ tablespoons butter
- 2 sprigs thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 10 allspice berries
- 8 cloves
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 65 grams / 2.2 oz Demi-Glace sauce see text above for substitution
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.
- Add the onions and saute until very soft and caramelized.
- Drop the temperature to the lowest. Add the garlic, 1 tablespoon of butter, thyme, bay leaves, allspice, and cloves.
- Cook for about 10 minutes without stirring too often.
- Pour in the wine and season with some salt and pepper. Turn the temperature to high and once the wine starts to bubble drop the heat again to medium.
- Simmer until reduced to ½ of its original volume.
- Pass the sauce through a sieve squeezing the onions very well with a spoon to release all of their liquid.
- Add the strained sauce back to the saucepan. Make sure you clean the saucepan with paper towels first.
- Add the honey, remaining 1 ½ tablespoon of butter, and the Demi Glace sauce to the saucepan.
- Simmer the sauce for 5-10 minutes more, over medium heat. Until it gets nice and glazy.
- Serve over roasts, grilled meats, etc. After the sauce gets to room temperature, you can store it in a glass jar in the fridge for up to a week.
Nutrition
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