Veinison steaks in red wine sauce
Oct. 24th, 2021 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricLiberally adjusted from the Women's Weekly 1970 (1972 reprint) 'steak in red wine sauce' recipe. I didn't have the added ingredients for most of the venison-in-red-wine-sauce recipes I could find online, so I went back to the Reliable Ancestral Cookbook (which has no recipes for venison, but does have steak recipes, and so here we are)
This recipe is: stove-only; gluten-free; tomato free
This recipe could be: plausibly dairy free (if you have a good margarine or butter substitute); mushroom-free (and indeed originally was mushroom free, that's my addition)
This recipe is NOT, no matter how hard you try: low-fat; alcohol-free; vegetarian or vegan (like... i guess you could make a red wine sauce for something else, but I'm sure there are independent recipes for that)¨
This recipe requires: multiple pots/pans, patience; ideally a small strainer eg a teastrainer but not one that has tea stains
Venison steaks, some (idek, I'm in Switzerland, cuts of meat are completely different here. I had two steaks that, from eyeballing them I thought would be better off seared than stewed. I was right)
1 small brown/yellow onion, diced
About 5 button mushrooms, sliced
3-4 cloves garlic, diced or minced
About 100 grams of butter, give or take
1 cup red wine (that was an Aus cup, but honestly 250 mil was too much/too thin, so aim for somewhere between 150 and 250 mil depending on how many steaks you're serving)
A dash of lemon juice
A dash of dried parsley or dried tarragon (original recipe said parsley, I was out, tarragon weirdly seemed to work)
Somewhere between 1 and 3 teaspoons of pure maize flour, depending on your luck / how far you need your sauce to stretch
Ground pepper, a generous amount
1. WINE SAUCE STAGE 1: After dicing the onion, put half of it in a small saucepan with ... somewhere between 25 and 50g of butter, I eyeballed it. Melt butter and sautée the onion.
2. OPTIONAL MUSHROOM STAGE 1: place the remaining onion, the diced garlic, and sliced mushrooms in a small frying pan, with more butter (eyeball; add more if they soak it all up). Fry on medium-high until the mushrooms start to brown, then turn over to low.
3. When the onions in the wine sauce start to glisten (ie, after at least 5 min), add the wine. Keep at about medium heat, bring to boil. Add ground pepper as you're starting step 4.
4. Coat both sides of the venison steaks in ground pepper.
5. The wine needs to reduce by half. When it starts visibly reducing, add MOAR BUTTER - lashings of butter - to a larger frying pan. Sear the venison steaks on each side, no more than 3 min.
6. When you're done, the sauce will not be done. Turn the power off the steaks, and/or remove them entirely, depending on your ~vibes~ for where they need to be between med-rare and medium (you do not want to take venison further than medium).
7. Sift 1-2 tsp of maize flour over the mushroom mix. Pour the wine sauce into this pan. Turn heat up to boil off rapidly. If you're not using mushrooms sift directly into the wine pot.
8. When, as seems inevitable, this doesn't thicken enough, repeat sifting the flour. SIFT I SAY. Your alternative is to mix a bit of maize flour with cold water, then slowly integrate it into the hot sauce. If you do neither of those things, you get weird floury globs. Take it from me, a person who only sifts for Christmas Cake or sauce.
9. When the sauce looks like a pleasing texture / enough to go around, pour it over your steaks and nom.
A traditional side would be potatoes and steamed or braised veg. I ate mine with leftover cabbage and carrot pilaf, and enjoyed it greatly.
Also, while venison was nice, I'm 100% sure this recipe would be 300% tastier with kangaroo, if you can access kangaroo steaks. Serve those no more than medium rare!
This recipe is: stove-only; gluten-free; tomato free
This recipe could be: plausibly dairy free (if you have a good margarine or butter substitute); mushroom-free (and indeed originally was mushroom free, that's my addition)
This recipe is NOT, no matter how hard you try: low-fat; alcohol-free; vegetarian or vegan (like... i guess you could make a red wine sauce for something else, but I'm sure there are independent recipes for that)¨
This recipe requires: multiple pots/pans, patience; ideally a small strainer eg a teastrainer but not one that has tea stains
Venison steaks, some (idek, I'm in Switzerland, cuts of meat are completely different here. I had two steaks that, from eyeballing them I thought would be better off seared than stewed. I was right)
1 small brown/yellow onion, diced
About 5 button mushrooms, sliced
3-4 cloves garlic, diced or minced
About 100 grams of butter, give or take
1 cup red wine (that was an Aus cup, but honestly 250 mil was too much/too thin, so aim for somewhere between 150 and 250 mil depending on how many steaks you're serving)
A dash of lemon juice
A dash of dried parsley or dried tarragon (original recipe said parsley, I was out, tarragon weirdly seemed to work)
Somewhere between 1 and 3 teaspoons of pure maize flour, depending on your luck / how far you need your sauce to stretch
Ground pepper, a generous amount
1. WINE SAUCE STAGE 1: After dicing the onion, put half of it in a small saucepan with ... somewhere between 25 and 50g of butter, I eyeballed it. Melt butter and sautée the onion.
2. OPTIONAL MUSHROOM STAGE 1: place the remaining onion, the diced garlic, and sliced mushrooms in a small frying pan, with more butter (eyeball; add more if they soak it all up). Fry on medium-high until the mushrooms start to brown, then turn over to low.
3. When the onions in the wine sauce start to glisten (ie, after at least 5 min), add the wine. Keep at about medium heat, bring to boil. Add ground pepper as you're starting step 4.
4. Coat both sides of the venison steaks in ground pepper.
5. The wine needs to reduce by half. When it starts visibly reducing, add MOAR BUTTER - lashings of butter - to a larger frying pan. Sear the venison steaks on each side, no more than 3 min.
6. When you're done, the sauce will not be done. Turn the power off the steaks, and/or remove them entirely, depending on your ~vibes~ for where they need to be between med-rare and medium (you do not want to take venison further than medium).
7. Sift 1-2 tsp of maize flour over the mushroom mix. Pour the wine sauce into this pan. Turn heat up to boil off rapidly. If you're not using mushrooms sift directly into the wine pot.
8. When, as seems inevitable, this doesn't thicken enough, repeat sifting the flour. SIFT I SAY. Your alternative is to mix a bit of maize flour with cold water, then slowly integrate it into the hot sauce. If you do neither of those things, you get weird floury globs. Take it from me, a person who only sifts for Christmas Cake or sauce.
9. When the sauce looks like a pleasing texture / enough to go around, pour it over your steaks and nom.
A traditional side would be potatoes and steamed or braised veg. I ate mine with leftover cabbage and carrot pilaf, and enjoyed it greatly.
Also, while venison was nice, I'm 100% sure this recipe would be 300% tastier with kangaroo, if you can access kangaroo steaks. Serve those no more than medium rare!