French · Sauce

Sauce Grand Veneur

Advanced
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · gently hot · bright Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a warm current of chile, with a clean, bright snap.

Ingredients

500 g venison bones and trimmings, chopped small
40 g clarified butter
100 g carrot, in 1 cm dice
120 g onion, in 1 cm dice
60 g celery, in 1 cm dice
100 ml red wine vinegar
400 ml dry red wine
800 ml brown veal or game stock
8 juniper berries, crushed
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
4 g black peppercorns, crushed
30 g redcurrant jelly
80 ml double cream
30 g cold butter, in cubes
4 g fine salt

Equipment

Fine sieve

The skills inside

Straining & passing through a sieve Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias

The words inside

Redcurrant

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · celery · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Brown the bones and trimmings in the clarified butter until the fond on the pan floor is mahogany, and stop it there.
Add the carrot, onion and celery, colour them, then pour in the vinegar and reduce it for about 3 minutes, until the pan is nearly dry and glazed and the smell has lost its sting. 3 min
Add the wine, reduce by two thirds, then add the stock, juniper, bay and thyme and hold at 90C (194F) for 45 minutes, skimming the grey foam. 45 min
Throw in the crushed peppercorns for the final 10 minutes only, then strain through a fine sieve, pressing the solids lightly. 10 min
Whisk in the redcurrant jelly and the cream, salt it, and swirl in the cold butter off the heat, keeping the pan below 90C (194F).

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes

Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.

Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.

At the Table

The Pour: Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
Also Right: The braising wine itself, better bottle
From the Taps: Belgian dubbel
Zero-Proof: Beet & blackcurrant shrub

Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Sauce Grand Veneur Search YouTube: Jacques Pépin on Sauce Grand Veneur A YouTube search for Jacques Pépin and this dish. No affiliation.