Shallot Sauce: The Classic Recipe for Your Red Meats

In a bistro kitchen, the smell of butter melting with shallots always means the same thing: a cut of meat is about to be served with its proper sauce, spooned over the plate just before it is set down in front of the customer.

This shallot sauce takes thirty minutes to make with four basic ingredients. It goes with a grilled flank steak, rib-eye or beef fillet, and it even keeps for a day or two in the fridge if you make a little extra.

Ingredients

• 4 shallots
• 25 cl red wine
• 20 cl veal stock (or beef stock)
• 60 g butter, including 20 g very cold
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• Salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• A little chopped flat-leaf parsley (optional)

Step-by-step recipe

1. Prepare the shallots. Peel them and slice them thinly into even, fairly small pieces.
2. Sweat them. In a saucepan, melt 40 g of butter over low heat and add the shallots. Cook for 7 to 8 minutes, stirring often, without letting them brown.
3. Deglaze with red wine. Pour in the wine, raise the heat to medium and reduce by half, about 6 to 7 minutes, until the liquid turns syrupy.
4. Add the stock. Pour in the veal stock, lower the heat and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly and coats a spoon.
5. Adjust the seasoning. Add the vinegar, then season with salt and pepper. Taste: the sauce should be rounded, never sharp.
6. Finish the sauce. Off the heat, whisk in the 20 g of cold butter cut into small pieces until melted. This is what gives the sauce its shine and its smooth, coating texture.
7. Serve immediately. Spoon the sauce over the grilled or pan-fried meat as soon as it is ready, before it cools and loses its shine.

Chef's tip

The secret to a good shallot sauce lies in finishing it with cold butter. Once the sauce is off the heat, the butter should melt without ever boiling: if the sauce goes back on the heat after the butter is added, it may split and turn greasy instead of glossy. For extra flavour, make the sauce in the pan you used to cook the meat: the browned bits left on the bottom blend with the shallots and deepen the whole flavour.

Variations

• Flank steak with shallots: serve this sauce over a pan-fried flank steak, deglazing the meat pan with the wine before adding the shallots cooked separately.
• Creamy version: add 2 tablespoons of crème fraîche at the end of cooking for a milder sauce, less bistro in style.
• With port: replace half of the red wine with port for a rounder flavour, perfect with beef fillet.
• With mustard: whisk in a teaspoon of mustard together with the cold butter to give the sauce a little kick.

Frequently asked questions

What meat goes with shallot sauce?

This sauce is mainly served with grilled or pan-fried red meat: flank steak, rib-eye, beef fillet or rump steak. It also pairs very well with pan-fried duck breast, whose rendered fat works nicely with the acidity of the reduced wine and the sweetness of the shallots.

Can you make shallot sauce without red wine?

Yes. Replace the wine with beef stock and add a teaspoon of wine vinegar to bring back the acidity that balances the sauce. The result will be a little less robust, but the texture and the cold butter finish stay exactly the same.

How do you store shallot sauce?

It keeps for 2 days in the fridge in an airtight container. Reheat it gently over very low heat without ever letting it boil, or the butter will separate. If it splits anyway, whisk it again off the heat with a knob of cold butter.

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