Red Wine Mushroom Reduction

This is my first successful reduction sauce. I had tried in the past, and just wasn't getting it. This is a fairly time intensive undertaking, and requires essentially constant monitoring.

Ingredients:

750 ml (one bottle) red wine.
~ 1 cup coarsely chopped mushrooms. I used regular button, shitake, and oyster, but experiment!

garlic, finely chopped. Most of the recipes I've found call for one clove, but I like garlic a lot. I'd say use three.

2-3 shallots, finely chopped.

1 cup chicken or beef stock (or veal?)


I used Little Penquin cabernet or some such, which is a terrible wine. Fortunately, when cooking wine, the quality becomes less important. However, a better wine is obviously going to make a better wine reduction. Just don't waste money buying fancy wine (unless you want to). Variations on reduction sauces sometimes involve port, which is extremely sweet.

Sautee the garlic and shallots in a medium sauce pan on medium low heat so as not to burn them. Add the mushrooms and sautee briefly. Add the whole bottle of wine and bring to a boil. Boil on medium high heat for about 2 hours (and don't leave, you have to monitor this stuff constantly). You basically want the wine to reduce to about 20-25%. Strain out all the garlic/shallots/mushrooms and set aside. Transfer reduction to a small sauce pan and add 1 cup chicken stock. Reduce for another hour at medium-high. Remove from heat and stir in about 1 tbsp. butter. You don't want to heat the sauce at this point, or the butter will separate. Done properly this will further thicken the sauce and give it a nice even shine. Serve immediately.

The mushrooms etc that were strained out and set aside can be used as a topper for the steak if you like. Be warned, the mushrooms will have soaked up a great deal of the wine flavor, and can be fairly overpowering. The re-used mushrooms weren't a big hit combined with the sauce, but used properly I think could be interesting (such as mixing them in to long grain wild rice).


Keep in mind that this is my first success with reduction. I'll be trying again, with some variation, so this post may well be added to in the future.

-Caine