Simple Beer Sauce

Gravy, Sauce, Reduction, blah blah – adding a flavorful lubricant to your meat experience can enhance things quite significantly. But building a sauce from scratch can be a daunting task to a novice cook. Even as I type this, I don’t really know how to make sauces – but I know some basic tricks that can help you trick even the most critical foodie friend into thinking you know your shit.

This is a beer reduction style gravy/sauce that I put together for some pork loin steaks that I did tonight. It’s a very simple recipe, and can be used in many situations where meat is being cooked. For this sauce, I had just finished cooking a pork steak in a pan. I was drinking beer while I was cooking – home brewed blackberry porter – (it’s ok). I thought ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a sauce to top this pork’. Instincts took over, and a half of a pint of the porter went into the pan and started sizzling immediately – deglazing all the goodness that was crusted onto the bottom. You could use any beer – and then steer things in either a sweet, semi-sweet or savory direction, depending on your mood. I was feeling semi-sweet, because porters carry a lot of malt backbone, and therefore- I already part of the way there.

First thing I did was add some honey – which I did three different times while I was putting this sauce together. As the water content of beer reduces over heat, it can get more bitter in flavor and take sudden turns – so constant sampling and addition of seasonings and things is my game plan. Like I said, I don’t really know shit. I’m sure there are people out there that know ratios and outcomes and would laugh at this post, but cooking for me is an art form, and just like my drawing, I don’t have a clear and concise plan when I start, but enjoy the creative process almost as much as the outcome.

Salt, cracked pepper, garlic salt, Sriracha, more honey, taste, stir, pad of butter, repeat – oh wait -there it was… the critical component to a tasty sauce. Butter. My brother worked in a high end restaurant when he finished up college, before starting his career in web development, and he broke that piece of knowledge off on me. Butter, was love. If you want to put some ‘love’ into a dish, you put butter in. Butter = love. I think we can all agree, he’s right it is. You get a sauce tasting the way you want, and you’re just watching it reduce to the consistency you want – drop a tablespoon of butter in there, and let it slowly melt into the sauce until it’s completely melted – such a great sight.

Meanwhile, the pork steak was starting to cool off, and the hash of mushrooms, onions. jalapeños and other finely diced vegetables I had sautéed were as well. I had to finish this sauce up! The flavor was exactly where I wanted it to be, I just wanted it to thicken up just a little more! Here is my trick – grab a healthy pinch of flour between your thumb and 3 biggest fingers. Then, while stirring the sauce directly under your pinch, don’t just sprinkle the flour in like it was kosher salt – make a conscious effort to grind the flour between your thumb and fingers as you let it go and slooowly sprinkle it into the sauce – this eliminates the need for a mix with water in a separate small dish, and the clumps that would show up if you just dropped the flour into the sauce. Within minutes, the sauce thickened..  and I had a dark, semi-sweet sauce that made my dinner more than just a pan-seared pork steak with some sautéed veggies.

Here it is in a more ‘drizzled’ presentation, rather than mixed up like the photo above.

Beer Sauce
beer sauce!

 

 

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