Tips for the Best Steak Sauce 

Most great cooks will say that utilising the pan juices is essential to a truly great sauce. Adding a little delicious fat and a touch of smokiness, we whole-heartedly believe that pan juices (or dripping) contribute the flavour components that set a great sauce apart from a good one.

With this golden rule up your sleeve, the following tips may also be helpful to ensure that your sauce turns out exactly as you had planned;

• If your sauce has a cream component, be sure to turn the temperature down before adding this to the pan. If the cream is allowed to boil it will often curdle and the fats will seperate, leaving you with an oily sauce. Bringing the cream to room temperature before adding to the sauce can also assist to avoid this happening.
• It’s advisable to use the best beef stock possible – we always use Provenir’s Best Broth bone broth in place of stock for an extra flavour and added health benefit boost.
• Don’t waste your leftover sauces! Most types of steak sauce freeze perfectly, meaning that you can defrost the leftover portions and then gently heat in a saucepan to serve at a later time.

Three Delicious Traditional Steak Sauce Recipes To Try

Peppercorn Sauce

A stalwort of most Aussie pub steak menus, the faithful peppercorn sauce is a delicious gravy variation that adds a touch of peppery excitement and rich creaminess to your meal. Toasting the peppercorns before grinding gives this sauce an extra edge.

Follow the recipe below to prepare our Peppercorn Steak sauce.

French Bordelaise Sauce

French bistros are arguably the home of many a great steak sauce. This recipe traditionally uses wine from the Bordeaux region of France, which is famous for its blends of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Consequently, a medium-rare steak and Bordelaise sauce is a perfect match a glass of full bodied red. As mentioned earlier, a good quality beef stock or bone broth will really make this sauce sing.

Cooking with Wine 

Cooking with wine sounds simple – add a splash of this and a splash of that, or a more decent pour if you’re so inclined. However, for a balanced sauce that isn’t too overpowering, it’s important to stick with the quantities recommended in the sauce recipe that you are following.

The most important tip for including wine in your sauces or dishes is to use good quality wine or cognac. Many chefs over the years have been quoted to say that if you wouldn’t drink it, you shouldn’t cook with it! A safe approach is to use a little of the wine that you plan to enjoy with your meal.

When it comes to red wine, something reasonably full-bodied such as Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon will produce the best results for red meat dishes. However, try to avoid a wine that has too much tannin.

It’s also recommended to use a fresh bottle of wine. While it’s not necessary to open a new bottle for each dish and it’s fine to use wine that has become a little oxidised, avoid wine that has been opened for more than two weeks. Using particularly old wine in your recipe may mean that some of the most typical spoiled wine flavours will appear in the dish.

Diane Sauce

A favourite for many years, Diane sauce is both luxurious and surprisingly simple to prepare. Key to the richness of this sauce is the addition of cognac, called brandy in its non-French iteration. While brandy may not be as commonplace as in years past, high-quality brandies can still be found in Australia. If in doubt, you can always opt for the French original – cognac.

Why include wine in sauce recipes?

In short, red wine and cognac work to add a delicious richness of flavour to sauces and meat dishes. The alcohol in wine works to cut through and dissolve fats, resulting in an added release of the flavour molecules within the meat and the dish. Key to this process is allowing the wine to cook off, thus reducing the alcohol content in the dish but capturing the wonderful flavour effect.

Although a more noticeable experience when drinking wine with a dish rather than cooking with it, tannins are also key to the experience of food and wine pairing. These textural components of a wine interact with proteins in the meat, making for a softer mouth experience. The final key component – acidity – also contributes to the palatability of fats in meat.