Classic Mushroom Sauce

This classic mushroom sauce can be served with all kinds of roasted or grilled meat dishes but is most commonly spooned over a juicy, sizzling steak. It is made with sauteed mushrooms, shallots, and just a splash of sherry, and simmered in a basic demi-glace.

And what's a demi-glace? Demi-glace comes from French cuisine and is a rich brown sauce that is either a base for other sauces or used on its own. The traditional method for making a demi-glace is combining equal parts veal stock with Espagnole sauce—one of the "mother sauces" in classical French cooking—but today there are ways to cut down on the eight hours of cooking time by using store-bought beef stock.

Note, however, that demi-glace gets its characteristic dark color from the reduction and concentration of brown stock, which itself is colored mainly through the browning of the bones that are later simmered for a long time to extract the collagen and other proteins from the bones.

The browning, which occurs as a result of the Maillard reaction, is what gives the stock its color, and that color is in turn concentrated and deepened through the steps involved in making the demi-glace. However, if the bones themselves are not roasted, or if the original sauce that is used to make the demi-glace was made using store-bought broth or stock that may not have been made with roasted bones (or any bones at all, for that matter), the abbreviated method may result in a demi-glace that lacks the deep color you probably want.

The solution: These days there are quite a few demi-glace bases which are made by producing a classic demi-glace in the traditional way, then simmering it until it forms a thick concentrated paste. Adding water to this paste will produce a demi-glace which in many cases is as good or better than what you'd likely make at home, and with much less labor. Using one of these products is certainly a legitimate way to prepare this mushroom sauce recipe.