A pan sauce is just what it sounds like -- a sauce made in the same pan that you have just used to cook something.
Consider this scenario: In a sauté pan over high heat, you sear a steak, leaving savory brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Once cooked, the meat is removed, and those brown bits become the flavor base for the pan sauce. You pour off any excess fat from the pan, and then you deglaze with water, wine, stock, fruit juice, vinegar or some other liquid. You reduce that liquid down and then maybe finish it off with a touch of cream, a knob of butter or a squeeze of citrus juice. After you take the pan off the heat, you can sprinkle in some chopped herbs and last-minute seasonings.
To really brown meat and poultry and leave behind bits to form the base of a pan sauce, you need a stainless steel pan. We love Gourmet Standard's Tri-Ply 10-inch sauté pan. It's affordable and absolutely reliable.
Should I toast whole spices before grinding them?
Should I toast whole spices before grinding them?
Toasting whole spices in a medium-hot pan for 2 to 4 minutes before grinding them wakes up their flavors, releases their oils and brings out their fragrance and nutty flavor.
Spice-heavy cuisines like those of South Asia often fry ground spices in oil and aromatics like onion and garlic before combining them with other ingredients, making toasting redundant. But in dishes where spices aren't cooked on their own, and in rubs and pastes, toasting spices before grinding them is well worth the extra few minutes.
Be sure to shake the pan so spices toast evenly and keep an eye on them so they do not burn.
What do we mean by shimmering oil?
What do we mean by shimmering oil?
Shimmering oil is hot oil that is nearing its smoke point.
At room temperature, common cooking oils like vegetable and olive oil seem fairly thick. Put them in a pan and heat them though, and they thin out when you swirl the pan. As they get hotter, they tend to "flow" and coat the pan more easily.
In the right light, when you look at oil that's at a good temperature for sautéing -- nice and hot, but not yet smoking -- it shimmers. It forms "tines" like those on a wine glass. It looks colorful, iridescent even.
Shimmering oil is good for sautéing because it increases the chances that the food won't stick. Hot oil immediately seals the bottom of food, creating a natural barrier between it and the bottom of the pan.
What does it mean to let the butter's foam subside?
What does it mean to let the butter's foam subside?
Certain phrases have become part of the recipe vernacular despite giving little in the way of good guidance. Most of us, for example, have seen something like this in recipes that call for cooking with butter:
“Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a medium saucepan. When the foam subsides, add the vegetables and stir.”
Why does the butter's foam need to subside?
It’s an indicator of temperature. Adding vegetables or meat to cold fat is a fast way to mess up a good dish. The ingredients soak up the butter rather than cook in it, and the finished dish can turn out excessively buttery and too moist on the surface. Hot fat, on the other hand, prevents sticking and encourages browning.
Letting the butter's foam subside before adding ingredients ensures a hot cooking environment and adds a rich flavor to the dish. Of course, butter is hot well before its foam subsides. In some dishes like soups, where you're sweating vegetables, you may not want that extra richness. In these cases, you're looking for the point at which the butter begins to foam.
But if a recipe does call for you to let the butter's foam subside, here's a rough guide:
Heat 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat. Swirl the butter around in the pan. The milk solids will begin to separate out. The butter will sizzle and foam.
After another minute or so the foam subsides. The butter looks more like oil now, and it’s hot. At this point you might add eggs for an omelette.
For something like a sage butter sauce, let the butter go another 30 seconds or so to let it brown and take on a slightly nutty flavor. Like olive oil, butter has a low smoke point, so watch it closely. You don't want it to burn and smoke. If it does, rinse and dry the pan, then start over.
Recipe: Tortellini With Sage, Brown Butter, And Parmesan (Cookthink)
Related: Root Source: Unsalted Butter (Cookthink)
Since the creation of a pan sauce starts with the meat, choose a meat that requires searing, such as this rack of lamb. The browning process of searing makes "fond" -- or caramelized bits of meat and fat that stick to the pan.
Sear the meat to create a caramelized crust, remove from the pan and add some diced aromatic vegetables, such as onions, shallots or mirepoix. The vegetables will begin to release liquid as soon as they hit the heat, which will start to dissolve the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Adding in a sprig of thyme, rosemary or parsley at this point to add another layer of flavor.
Once the onions begin to soften, deglaze the pan with wine, water or another liquid to dissolve the remaining browned bits in the liquid and completely cook the aromatic vegetables.
Allow the wine to reduce and evaporate then add some stock to the pan and reduce again.
Once the stock has reduced, finish the sauce with a knob of butter and allow it to melt off the heat by swirling the pan -- this will help emulsify the sauce. Once you've added butter, the sauce cannot be brought back up to high heat or it will "break" and become greasy.
If you like a finer result, you can strain the sauce before using it to dress the meat.
Many people think that sweetbreads are culinary code for calves' brains.
But the term sweetbreads is actually a benign-sounding pseudonym for the paired thymus glands and pancreas of milk-fed veal or calves. (You can also find inferior pork or lamb sweetbreads if you look hard enough.) The rounder pancreas gland near the heart is more prized than the tubular thymus throat gland. The pancreas gland has a more delicate flavor and smoother texture.
If you're shopping for sweetbreads, be sure that they're still snow white, fleshy and firm to the touch. Rinse them in several changes of acidulated water before using. Once you get them home, don't keep them for more than 24 hours in the refrigerator. Sweetbreads are normally blanched, refreshed in cold water and cooled before being braised, poached, sautéed, fried, broiled or blended into a soufflé, pâté or filling.
