by Zach Bigalke

Created on: April 11, 2007   Last Updated: December 06, 2011

As the waiter arrives with the entree, your eye is immediately drawn to the thick, shimmering demiglace professionally drizzled over the slices of buffalo prime rib. Or, perhaps it is the luxurious riesling cream sauce adorning a seared filet of chamomile-crusted salmon. Whatever the dish, it is the sauce that ties together the dish and transforms an ordinary dining experience into an extraordinary culinary revelation. Since the time of Antonin Careme and Auguste Escoffier, sauces have been an integral part of the dinner plate. A few simple tips will soon have you wowing dinner guests with your own expertly-crafted reduction.

To demonstrate proper technique, I will walk you through the steps to create that riesling cream sauce mentioned above. An old favorite at Spikes Bar and Grill, a restaurant at which I used to be saucier, this sauce offers a slightly-sweet undertone which complements meatier fish such as salmon or arctic char. The techniques learned here will be a valuable resource for any cream sauce you may wish to make.

Begin with a sturdy saute pan or small saucepan. Over medium-high heat, reduce two ounces of riesling with one tablespoon minced shallot until the shallots are soft and the wine is nearly evaporated. Add four ounces heavy cream (forty-percent milkfat) and turn down the heat to low. Allow the cream to simmer softly, stirring occasionally with a whisk or spoon. The cream will slowly reduce, thickening as the water evaporates from the liquid. Test for the appropriate thickness by running the back of a metal spoon over the top of the sauce. If the sauce coats the spoon with minimal runoff, the sauce is fully reduced. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Then, before serving, whisk in one tablespoon of cold butter. This technique, referred to in French as "monter au beurre" - literally "to mount with butter" - provides a finishing sheen to the sauce. This is why the sauce glistens on your plate when it arrives in a restaurant.

For meat stocks, the gelatin in the sauce works in the same manner as the milkfat in cream, remaining intact in the sauce as the water evaporates. Demiglace, the pinnacle of stock-based sauces, is veal stock reduced over low heat until it reaches half its original volume. But, one must ask, how do tomato and other non-cream and non-stock sauces thicken without an added thickener such as arrowroot or cornstarch?

This is simple. Vegetables and fruits contain various percentages of water in their composition. In tomato sauces, for example, the process of parboiling to remove the skin and deseeding the tomato eliminate the areas with both inferior texture and water composition. The meat of the tomato, cooked with onions, garlic, peppers and herbs, is then pureed and reduced to create a delicious vegetarian marinara.

The three basic things to remember when reducing a sauce are to keep the sauce at a constant simmering temperature, to begin with good ingredients, and to remain patient. It is easy and convenient when under time constraints to make a quick roux with equal parts butter and flour and thicken a sauce in that manner. It is even easier to whisk some cornstarch in water to make a slurry thickener. But proper reduction condenses flavors which cannot be substituted in any other fashion. Reduction is simply a matter of the correct heat for the correct amount of time.

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