Day 24: Pan Sauces

Now that we are in module 2 we are working on dry heating methods. To start we did sauteing. Today was really quick and simple but really yummy. We made sauteed chicken and sauteed flank steak.

We started with a layer of clarified butter (obviously), seasoned with chicken with salt and pepper, placed it in the pan and let it cook on each side until golden brown. After the meat browns it is removed from the pan, and its time to make the pan sauce. You use the same pan you cook the meat in to get the drippings from the meat. First off you add shallots and brown them briefly. Then you add white wine to deglaze the pan, removing all of the sticky stuff from the pan and adding it to the sauce. Once again you need to remove the pan from the flame when adding the wine, or at least if you want to keep your eyebrows. Once you put the pot back on it is possible the sauce will catch on fire, which is scary but normal. The sauce begins to simmer and you add butter and stir it in. We plated the meat and "drew" the sauce onto the plate making it really pretty.

Next up we did the same thing with the flank steak. Since it is dark meat we made the pan sauce using red wine and veal stock instead of white wine and chicken stock. Steak is also thicker so it may brown on the outside, but it is common that it is still uncooked on the inside. You can stick the steak into the oven for a few minutes to cook it through. We were aiming to cook medium rare but if it were up to me I would have kept it in the oven until it was well done. Both sauces were really delicious but this one stood out as my favorite. It had a really rich flavor for something that seemed so simple.