Red Wine Pan Sauce

Saturday night we went to the ballet, I know I have the greatest husband in the whole world, and instead of going out to an expensive restaurant that makes food only marginally better than what I can do if I put my mind to it, I decided to cook instead.  I decided to make venison with a red wine pan sauce and potatoes with caramelized onions and holy cow I was pretty dang impressed with how this turned out.  This wasn’t that much work and it definitely tasted as good as any restaurant we would have gone to, and for a fraction of the cost.  This pan sauce recipe is a slight adaptation from Cooks Illustrated and of course you can serve this over beef.



1 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp yellow onion, minced
1 bay leaf
½ cup dry red wine
½ cup chicken stock
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
½ tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp thyme
1 ½ tbs butter
Salt and pepper to taste

In the skillet that you cooked your steaks in, with it still hot, remove it from the heat and add the sugar and onion to the empty skillet.  Using the pan’s residual heat, cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is slightly softened and browned and sugar is melted, about 45 seconds.
Return the skillet to medium heat, add the wine, broth, and bay leaf.  Bring to a boil and scrape up the browned bits in the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.  Boil until the liquid is reduced to about ¼ cup, about 4 minutes.  Stir in vinegar and mustard and cook at medium heat to blend the flavors, about 1 minute.
Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the butter until melted and sauce is thickened and glossy.  Add thyme and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Remove bay leaf and spoon sauce over steaks.  Serve immediately.

If you cook your sauce down too far and end up with nothing you can add more liquid to it before the butter step, just let that cook down to get the volume you need and to give it time to meld the flavors.
This sauce I thought was absolutely amazing; it completely transformed my venison steaks into a restaurant quality main dish in my opinion.  My husband suggested that we try to bottle it.
All of these steps did go by really quickly and pretty much all involved me being over the pan, so I had to have my husband read off the steps as I got to them, and I recommend you do the same if you can, otherwise I can see how you could panic and screw up pretty easily if you have to run to your recipe to read the next step every time.