How do I reduce a sauce and deglaze a pan?

The brown residue stuck to a pan after browning meat is called fond, and it is concentrated flavour. Most home cooks wash it off. Deglazing lifts it into a liquid, and reducing concentrates that liquid into a sauce.

What you'll need

• The pan you cooked in
• Wine, stock or water
• Wooden spoon (optional)
• Butter (optional)

Step by step

1. Take the cooked food out and pour off excess fat.Leave the browned residue. Fat prevents the sauce emulsifying properly, so most of it should go.
2. Return the pan to a high heat and add liquid.Wine, stock, cider, vermouth or water. It will steam and bubble hard immediately.
3. Scrape the base with a wooden spoon.Everything stuck to the pan lifts into the liquid. This is the whole point of the exercise and it takes about thirty seconds.
4. Let it reduce by roughly half.Simmer uncovered. The liquid concentrates and thickens slightly as water evaporates.
5. Taste as it reduces.Reduction concentrates salt as well as flavour. Season at the end, not the start, or it becomes too salty.
6. Finish with cold butter off the heat.Whisk in a knob of cold butter. It adds gloss and body, and it is what makes a pan sauce taste finished.
7. Add anything fresh at the very end.Herbs, lemon, mustard, cream. Off the heat so their flavour is not cooked away.

Tips

• If the fond has gone black rather than brown, do not deglaze it. Burnt residue makes a bitter sauce — wipe the pan and start again.
• Water works perfectly well if you have no wine or stock. The flavour comes from the fond, not the liquid.
• Reduction is also the simplest way to thicken any sauce that is too thin, and it improves the flavour rather than diluting it.

Common mistakes

• Washing the pan after browning meat — You throw away the best flavour in the dish. Deglazing takes thirty seconds and turns it into a sauce.
• Seasoning at the start of a reduction — Reducing concentrates the salt. A properly seasoned liquid becomes too salty by the time it has halved.
• Adding butter over direct heat — It splits rather than emulsifying. Off the heat, whisked in cold, is what gives the glossy finish.

Questions people ask