Sauce "Demiglas" - French culinary miracle

Speaking of seasonings for various meat dishes, I immediately want to recall French culinary specialists. After all, it was they who in their time invented the famous Demiglas sauce.

What it is?

Most recipes of modern cuisine, as you know, came from the Middle Ages. Then there were no supermarkets with shelves littered with all kinds of spices and seasonings. People themselves created recipes by trial and error. It was at that time that Demiglas sauce first appeared. Over time, his recipe was forgotten, and could only be resurrected in the 19th century, when the Frenchman Antonin Karem decided to revive the secret of his preparation. He as a cook was especially interested in this question. After all, it is the sauce that is able to perfectly emphasize the taste of any meat. And in this, the French have always been known as great specialists. It is also interesting how Demiglas sauce is translated from the native language. In Russian, it sounds something like "half ice." Pretty weird name for liquid seasoning. Perhaps it was given because at the final stage, the finished Demiglas sauce is usually placed in a container filled with ice water. This is done so that the thickening process goes as intensely as possible.

In the spirit of national traditions of France

If you want to make Demiglas sauce at home, the recipe can be slightly adapted and adjusted to existing products. For work you will need: 1 kilogram of pork bones, 1.2 liters of beef broth, 150 grams of onions, 1 carrot, half celery root, 60 grams of tomato paste, a little vegetable oil, a bottle (0.5 liter) of dry red wine, 45 grams flour, 2 bay leaves, 1 branch of rosemary and 2 thyme, salt, 5 pieces of allspice, 3 cloves and ground pepper.

Cooking method:

1. Preheat the oven to 230 degrees.
2. Grease a baking sheet with oil, spread the bones on it and bake them for half an hour, placing it at the very bottom of the oven.
3. At this time, peel and chop vegetables arbitrarily.
4. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a deep frying pan and fry vegetables in it.
5. Add the broth and baked bones. Put it out together for about 5 minutes.
6. Put the paste and pour a third of the wine. Continue to simmer, but already with the lid closed.
7. Introduce, slowly, flour, and then the rest of the wine. Reduce the heat and continue boiling for about another hour.
8. Add all the spices and cook the mixture for another hour and a half. It is better to add herbs 20 minutes before readiness.
9. Strain the mixture, add pepper and salt, and then boil until the finished product remains 0.5 liters.

It turns out a real sauce "Demiglas". The recipe is interesting, and cooking, of course, is a long time, but the result is simply amazing.

Knorr to help

For those who do not want to waste time and burden themselves with cooking, there is one very simple way out. This is Demiglas Knorr sauce. It allows you to always have on hand a wonderful seasoning for a variety of meat dishes. In the distribution network, the product is sold in buckets. Each of them contains 1.5 kilograms of thick aromatic concentrate. The label indicates the application. In accordance with it, the mixture must:

1. Put the right amount in a clean dish and dilute with warm water (35-40 degrees) in the specified ratio.
2. Mix well until a plastic, homogeneous mass resembles a cream.
3. Put the container on fire and bring the mass to a boil.
4. Boil the sauce for no more than five minutes, stirring constantly, so that the mass does not burn.

I must agree that this is a great way out for a modern housewife. In conditions of time pressure, it’s easier to buy a good semi-finished product and make a first-class seasoning in a matter of minutes than to go shopping for a long time in search of the necessary components and stand at the stove for hours.

Simplest option

There are several ways to make Demiglas sauce. I must say that making it is not so simple. This is a very long and, moreover, laborious process. To make a real sauce, you will need very few products: 2 kilograms of beef (or calf) bones, 120 grams of celery root, 100 grams of onions and carrots, 5 grams of salt, 100 milliliters of red dry wine and 7 liters of plain water.

The cooking sequence should be as follows:

1. Bake vegetables and bones in the oven until a characteristic brown tint.
2. Place food in a deep pan. After that, fill everything with cold water and cook for 24 hours until the contents turn into jelly.
3. Strain the mass. To do this, it is better to use a fine sieve.
4. Pour the resulting liquid back into the pan, add wine and salt, and then put on medium heat. A few hours after slow evaporation, the contents should decrease by 4 times.

The sauce is almost ready. It remains only to cool it. To do this, you can use water with ice cubes or a refrigerator.