Sauces
Quick Demi-glace
A 30-minute home short cut to demi-glace: good shop-bought beef stock reduced with browned shallot, tomato purée and red wine, given body with a little gelatine and a touch of cornflour or arrowroot. Not the old-school espagnole route, but glossy, rich and ready for steak sauces, pan sauces and any recipe that asks for demi-glace.
- Serves 4
- Makes about 250 ml
- 30 minutes
- Freezes in cubes
- Home short cut
- French
Method
Sprinkle the gelatine (6 g) over 2 tablespoons of the cold water (3 tbsp) in a cup and leave it to swell (for leaf gelatine, soak the sheets in a bowl of cold water).
Melt the butter (15 g) in a wide frying pan or sauté pan over a medium heat. Add the shallots (2 shallots) and mushrooms (50 g), if using, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring, until soft and golden brown. Add the garlic (1 clove) for the last minute.
Stir in the tomato purée (1 tbsp) and cook for 1–2 minutes until it darkens to brick red and starts to catch on the pan. This browning gives the colour and depth that the roasted bones would.
Pour in the wine (150 ml), add the bay leaf (1 bay leaf) and peppercorns (½ tsp) and scrape up the brown bits. Boil until only about 2 tablespoons of syrupy liquid are left, 4–5 minutes.
Add the stock (600 ml) and boil steadily, skimming off any froth, until reduced to about 300 ml, 12–15 minutes. A wide pan reduces much faster than a deep one.
Strain into a small pan, pressing on the shallots. Off the heat, whisk in the swollen gelatine (squeeze out leaf gelatine first) until it has dissolved. Add the Worcestershire sauce (½ tsp), if using.
Bring back to a simmer. It should now coat the back of a spoon thinly. If you want it thicker, mix the cornflour or arrowroot (1 tsp) with the last tablespoon of cold water, whisk it in and simmer for 30 seconds, until glossy. Taste and season (to taste) carefully: shop stock is often salty already.
Use straight away, or cool and pour into an ice-cube tray. It sets to a soft jelly in the fridge, like the real thing, and melts back in seconds.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
Demi-glace, quick demi-glace or jus lié?
Three brown sauces that recipes often call for. Which one? The classic demi-glace is the traditional, old-school route: few kitchens make it this way now, but it is worth knowing because it gives sauces body, gloss, a good coating consistency and depth of flavour. Make a batch, freeze it in cubes, and a spoonful lifts any pan sauce. For a weeknight, the quick version does the same job in 30 minutes; for a roast, make a jus lié.
| Demi-glace (classic) | Quick Demi-glace | Jus Lié | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Brown stock + espagnole (brown roux, mirepoix, tomato), reduced together by half | Shop-bought stock reduced with shallot, tomato and red wine; gelatine for body | Roast juices and stock, lightly thickened with arrowroot or cornflour |
| Time | 2 days, mostly unattended | About 30 minutes | About 10 minutes |
| Texture | Thick, glossy, coats a spoon; sets to a firm jelly | Glossy, coats a spoon; sets softly | Light, clear and glossy; thinner |
| Today | The traditional, old-school route: kept by a few traditional kitchens. Most restaurants now reduce veal stock instead; most home cooks make pan sauces | The home cook’s short cut to the restaurant-style reduced stock | The everyday kitchen sauce for roasts and sautés |
| Use it for | Bordelaise, Madeira, Robert and other classic brown sauces; a batch in the freezer. Worth knowing: it gives body, gloss, a good consistency and depth | Steak and pan sauces, Diane, peppercorn sauce; any recipe that asks for demi-glace | Roast meat and poultry, chasseur, a “cordon of jus”; any recipe that asks for jus lié |
| Tip | Freeze in ice-cube trays: a spoonful lifts any pan sauce | Freeze in cubes too; check the salt | Make it in the roasting tin while the meat rests |
In the US
Most American home cooks do not make demi-glace at all. The usual route is a pan sauce: after searing a steak or chop, deglaze the pan with wine, add boxed beef stock or broth, boil it down and swirl in a little cold butter (our Jus Lié and this recipe both start the same way). Low-sodium broth matters, because reducing concentrates the salt.
Shop-bought short cuts are also common. These are examples, not recommendations:
- Demi-glace concentrate, such as More Than Gourmet Classic French Demi-Glace Gold (veal and beef stock with a roux; a 1.5 oz tub makes about 1 cup with water). Search on Amazon.com
- Stock paste, such as Better Than Bouillon Roasted Beef Base (1 tsp makes 1 cup of broth); make it up at full strength and use it as the stock here. Search on Amazon.com
- Brown gravy mix, such as McCormick Brown Gravy Mix: quick, but thickened with starch and flour and more like a gravy than a demi-glace. Search on Amazon.com
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See also
- Demi-glace (classic) — the old-school, two-day version
- Jus Lié
- Peppercorn Sauce
- Goujon of Chicken Diane
- Sauce Robert
Chef’s notes
- Which stock? A fresh chilled beef or veal stock, or a concentrated liquid stock or stock pot made up at the strength on the pack, works best. Low-salt is important because the stock is reduced by half.
- Why gelatine? Long-simmered bones give real demi-glace its sticky, glossy body. A little gelatine puts that body back into a shop stock; the starch is only there for extra coating.
- Arrowroot gives a clearer, glossier finish but thins again if it boils for long or is reheated; cornflour is more forgiving and reheats well.
- Alcohol-free: replace the wine with 100 ml extra stock and 1 teaspoon of red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar.
- A shop-bought demi-glace concentrate or a jar of good beef gravy will do at a pinch; taste for salt before seasoning.
Why a short cut?
Classic demi-glace takes two days: roasted-bone brown stock, then espagnole, then a long reduction (see our Demi-glace recipe). Even professional kitchens have looked for faster routes for well over a century. In 1907 Escoffier was already arguing that a starch-based roux and strong stock could make an espagnole in an hour.
Home cooks today usually take one of two routes. The first is a pan sauce made while the meat rests, which is what our Jus Lié page covers. The second is a reduced shop stock given body with gelatine, the approach America’s Test Kitchen and many home cooks use for their “faux” or “cheater’s” demi-glace. This recipe is the second kind.
How this recipe was developed
We compared fast “faux” demi-glaces from Christopher Kimball’s America’s Test Kitchen and the best-rated web versions with the restaurant reduced-stock method of Fallow and Gordon Ramsay.
- Brown the tomato purée. America’s Test Kitchen cooks tomato paste with onion and carrot until well browned before adding wine and broth.
- Low-salt stock, reduced hard. America’s Test Kitchen insists on low-sodium broth because the base is very concentrated.
- Gelatine for body. America’s Test Kitchen’s streamlined route uses gelatine to stand in for veal bones (45 minutes instead of 9 hours).
- Red wine and shallot. Gordon Ramsay and Fallow both reduce shallots and red wine before the stock goes in.
- A little starch, only if needed. America’s Test Kitchen adds a spoonful of flour; we keep the sauce clear with a pinch of cornflour or arrowroot at the end.
Sources we compared (opened 1 November 2026):
- America’s Test Kitchen: Sauce Base for Steak Diane (demi-glace facsimile)
- America’s Test Kitchen: Two Routes to Super-Rich Sauce (ground beef and gelatine, 45 minutes)
- Fallow (Jack Croft & Will Murray): Red Wine Sauce
- Gordon Ramsay: Beef Wellington with red wine sauce
- Instacart: More Than Gourmet Classic French Demi-Glace Gold, 1.5 oz (ingredients and directions)
- Better Than Bouillon: Roasted Beef Base
- McCormick: Brown Gravy Mix, 0.87 oz
Also consulted: Marcella Hazan and Rick Stein (we found no demi-glace or jus lié recipe of theirs to compare) and Christopher Kimball, whose America’s Test Kitchen versions are credited above.
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.