Citizens – in a rare daily double post, I was sadly reminded in My previous recipe for beef Bourguignon that My previous source for demi-glace – a necessity in many of My finest recipes – no longer sells direct to the public! I am relieved to say I have found an excellent replacement source here, but it reminded Me that I have NEVER in the 11 years of TFD published the proper way to MAKE demi-glace and its ultimate reduction, glace de viande! Well, it’s time to rectify that long-delayed post and share both the traditional and modern ways to make demi-glace in quantity, as well as glace de viande! Your diners will be grateful for your superlative saucier sagaciousness, I assure you!
Classically, a demi-glace was made from a brown veal stock mixed with Espagnole sauce and then reduced. Espagnole is itself a brown roux mixed with brown stock and tomato paste and is reduced as well. Here is a Chef who worked at the 3 Michelin-star restaurant “The French Laundry” talking modern demi-glace!
According to Louis Diat, the creator of vichyssoise and the author of the classic Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook: “There is a story that explains why the most important basic brown sauce in French cuisine is called sauce Espagnole, or Spanish sauce. According to the story, the Spanish cooks of Louis XIII’s bride, Anne, helped to prepare their wedding feast, and insisted upon improving the rich brown sauce of France with Spanish tomatoes. This new sauce was an instant success, and was gratefully named in honour of its creators.”
Today, demi-glace is recognized as the traditional brown sauce of French cuisine that is used on its own or as the flavoring base for other sauces, soups, and stews.
The sauce classically stems from sauce Espagnole, a classic brown sauce and one of the five “mother sauces” of French cuisine (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato) from which other (“daughter”) sauces are made. Demi-glace is made with a brown stock that begins with roasted ox, veal, or beef bones, to which are added tomato puree, red wine, mirepoix, other aromatic vegetables such as garlic and leeks, and herbs and spices such as thyme, pepper, and bay leaves. The mixture is briefly brought to a boil and then cooked on low heat for as long as 24 hours, skimming the fat and adding water as needed and then straining the stock to remove some of the solids while retaining the gelatin from the bones.
In France and in fine dining establishments throughout the world, making demi-glace and other sauces is considered a critical test of a chef’s skills. Demi-glace can be eaten as is, but in haute cuisine it is typically used as a base for other meat sauces or even gravy, with a spoonful or two added to dishes to deepen their flavor. Demi-glace can be frozen in ice trays, with cubes used in this way. As it is both time- and labor-intensive, many home cooks today – even in France – prefer to purchase ready made demi-glace.
On occasion, this is a sound strategy to be sure – but we can do it both better AND cheaper than that approach, My Citizens!
The roots of demi-glace date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 17th century, François Pierre La Varenne began refining the techniques that would later become standard for such meat-essence sauces. In the early 1800s, Antonin Carême, often called the “founder of modern French cooking,” pioneered the codification of sauces. He named Sauce Espagnole as one of the original four mother sauces. In the early 1900s, Escoffier – the “father of French cuisine” – refined the method in his seminal work, Le Guide Culinaire. Escoffier defined demi-glace specifically as a 1:1 mixture of Sauce Espagnole and brown veal stock, reduced by half until it reached a syrupy, glossy consistency.
The term comes from the French glace (meaning icing or glaze) and demi (half), referring to the process of reducing the mixture by half to create a glaze. Classically, it was a multi-day process involving simmering roasted veal bones, aromatics, and wine. While traditionalists still use Sauce Espagnole as a base, many modern chefs now create “demi-glace” by simply reducing a highly flavored brown stock to a syrupy consistency without the flour-based roux used in Espagnole that prevents it from freezing well. Demi-glace remains the essential base for numerous “daughter sauces” such as Bordelaise, Chasseur, and Robert.
A superbly-researched article on the history of Sauce Espagnole that I found at keplite.com has this to expound:
If we want to understand what exactly constitutes a Sauce Espagnole and how we can use it to our advantage, we ought to look at its evolution throughout history. There’s no better source for this than French chemist Hervé This vo Kientza, who developed Molecular Cuisine together with Nicholas Kurti and Pierre Gagnaire. As both his blog and his articles on Nouvelles Gastronomiques are in French we’ll provide the most important points here.
The first recipe for sauce Espagnole: Vincent La Chapelle (1735) In Le Cuisinier Moderne, La Chapelle describes the sauce the following way: pieces of ham and veal are baked in oil with onions, bay leaf and garlic. They’re then dusted with flour and covered with stock or jus (diluted meat juices), white wine (Coteaux Champenois, a still white Champagne or Rhine wine), coulis (puréed stock without flour), lemon (peel removed) basil, thyme, cloves and peppercorns are added. Everything is boiled, degreased and further reduced before the sauce is passed through a sieve.
It’s then served in a cup along with a “Spanish” meat stew (Olla Podrida or Pot-Pourri) containing various cuts of beef, veal, sheep, pig trotters, ham and ears, as well as a sausage made with pig brains, partridges, pigeons, half a cabbage, onions and spices.
Le Cuisinier Gascon (1740) Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, prince of Dombes lines a saucepan with veal thigh, ham, partridges, a bouquet garni (thyme, parsley, bay leaf); everything is lightly browned before being moistened with ordinary coulis (puréed stock without flour), Champagne wine (Coteaux Champenois), oil, salt, pepper, coriander and lemon.
To the stew he adds pheasant, young rabbit, a fat chicken, turkey wings, quail, regular sausage, yellow peas, saffron and breadcrumbs.
François Marin, Suite des dons de Comus (1742) Sauce Espagnole en gras, or “fat” Espagnole sauce: a piece of veal and several pieces of ham simmered with root vegetables (carrots, parsnip,…) after which we add veal jus (diluted meat juices), garlic essence (an extremely heavy reduction of garlic stock), white veal stock, oil, a pinch of coriander, 2 cloves and 3 or 4 button mushrooms left whole. We simmer everything over low heat, degrease and pass through a sieve. The sauce is finished with lemon juice.
Sauce Espagnole en maigre, or “skinny” sauce (for lent days): we cover the bottom of a pan with slices of onion, add fish in chunks, cover with more onion, carrots, parsnip and bouquet garni (parsley, thyme and bay leaf). We allow the onion to take colour and work everything off the bottom using fish stock. Only then do we add oil, garlic, clove, Champagne (Coteaux Champenois), coriander seed and “very little” bay leaf. Bring to a simmer in such a way that the oil doesn’t disperse in the sauce.
His “Spanish stew” is similar to the ones mentioned before, with the addition of garlic, mace, coriander seed, long pepper and clove stuffed into a small linen bag.
La Science du Maître d’Hôtel cuisinier (1749) Joseph Menon was probably the first author who wrote about peasant dishes that would please the elite: no more “Spanish stew” – a simple trout will do.
For the sauce he sweats veal with ham, carrots, turnip, onions and garlic, after which everything is deglazed with Champagne (Coteaux Champenois). Oil, white veal stock, ordinary stock, fine herbs (any garden herb), coriander seed and half a peeled lemon (in slices) are added, after which everything is cooked for 2 hours. Everything is degreased and sieved.
Marie-Antoine Carême, Le Cuisinier Parisien (1828): the Grand Sauce We butter a large casserole, add sliced ham, veal fillets (round and rump cuts of a large leg), a few chickens, with the addition of a pheasant, 2 partridges or the saddle of a wild rabbit. We cover the meat with stock, bring to a boil and skim. When the stock turns to a glaze, we lower the heat until the colour deepens. We pierce the meat and remove it from the fire for 15 minutes. We add degreased stock, bring to the boil and skim again. When the meat is cooked through we remove it and pour the sauce through a cheesecloth. We add a blond roux and bring everything to the boil again. Then we add sliced mushrooms, parsley, chives and bay leaf. We continue degreasing and skimming for another hour and a half. When we have a reddish-brown, brilliant glaze we pass everything through a fine sieve.
Jules Gouffé, Le Livre de Cuisine (1867) Gouffé replaced Carême’s 4 Grand Sauces (Espagnole, Velouté, German and Béchamel) with 12 Mother Sauces (both “fat” and “skinny” versions). From now on there was no more room for game or poultry in an Espagnole sauce: the simpler and more pure the flavour of the sauce, the better it combines with other elements.
Joseph Favre, Dictionnaire universel de cuisine pratique (1895) Favre starts with a white roux, moistens with veal and beef jus (diluted meat juices), simmers and skims for 24 hours while regularly adding extra just or stock. Then he adds lean bacon, onions, carrots, garlic thyme, bay leaf, tarragon, basil, cloves and white wine – and continues to simmer for another 6 hours.
Escoffier, Le Guide Culinaire (1903) Sauce Espagnole Grasse (with meat) 625g (1.38lbs) roux (unspecified whether white, blond or brown) 12l (3.17 gallon) brown veal fond A mirepoix consisting of 150g (5.29oz) of fatty bacon (belly cut), 250g (8.82oz) carrots and 150g (5.29oz) onions (coarsely chopped), 2 sprigs thyme and 2 bay leaves White wine to deglaze 1l tomato purée (passata) or 2kg of fresh tomatoes, peeled and deseeded Bring 8l fond to a gentle boil, add the roux. Meanwhile simmer the bacon in a separate pan using its own fat, add the rest of the mirepoix and stir until everything takes some colour. Pour everything through a sieve, allowing the fat to drip out and deglaze the pan with the wine. Add the mirepoix to the boiling fond and skim for an hour.
Pour everything through a sieve, press the mirepoix with a ladle, add 2l of fond and simmer for 2 more hours. Sieve again and allow to cool (put the pan on a downturned spoon to speed up the process and keep stirring to prevent a top layer from forming). Store in the fridge.
The next day we roast the tomato purée until reddish-brown in the oven (to remove its acidity, not needed with fresh tomatoes) and add it to the sauce with the remaining 2l of fond. We bring to a gentle boil again and cook for another hour, or until we achieve our reddish-brown colour. We pour everything through a sieve lined with cheesecloth and allow everything to cool again.
Sauce Espagnole Maigre (without meat) Almost the same as above: we use 10l (2.64 gallons) fumet (fish stock) instead of veal fond. We replace the bacon with butter and 250g (8.82oz) mushrooms. Everything else remains the same, including cooking time.
In today’s recipe, in classic French cuisine methodology, I will teach you to make the traditional version of demi-glace created by Escoffier but practically never seen today – as well as the modern version that is much easier to prepare. Glace de viande is simply a meat glaze made by reducing either version of demi-glace down to a proper glaze that will keep in your fridge for a long time, tightly-sealed to avoid spoilage and picking up off-smells. Unreduced demi-glace itself only lasts a few days in the fridge, but you could also freeze it in ice cube trays to enhance any pan sauce, gravy or stew you might want to uplift for you or your guests!
To start with, you are going to want to invest in a MONSTER stock pot, at least 30 quarts, to make this recipe in quantity – remember, you’re reducing down to a cup or two of final product if you’re making glace de viande (which you should be if you’re planning to store this longer than a few days in the fridge! There’s 20 pounds of bones, meats and more in My recipe and trust Me – you want this restaurant-sized 42 quart stockpot to work with!
Please don’t freak out when you read the classical Escoffier recipe, My Citizens – yes, it involves a LOT of work, but you can get assistance from friends and family (or just make the far easier modern version!). Your butcher can get you both sawn veal and beef marrow bones if you order them in advance. The original demi-glace recipes also used some game bones in its creation, as the great restaurants of centuries past always had a surfeit of them as well as game trimmings at their disposal. Modern recipes abandoned that ingredient in the last 75 years (to great detriment, IMHO!).
As such I have added back in some sawn marrow bones from elk, as elk is one of My favorite game meats and is a perfect North American addition to a European recipe classic (Reindeer is a variety of elk that IS found in Northern Europe, try using it as well if you can easily get them in the Nordic countries!) North American elk marrow bones ready for demi-glace making can be purchased from here. You could also use venison bones, if you so prefer and have access to them.
To add some healthy poultry base to this as well, as the ancient Chefs of yore once did, I add in either a Cornish Game Hen or a Silkie, a Chinese black chicken (with black skin and bones!) of similar size and weight that is renowned for both its unmatched flavor and health benefits. Don’t worry, it won’t turn anything black and you can buy one from here or much cheaper from your local Asian grocery store! To make the Espagnole sauce, you will need to create a “broken” roux – fear not, it is supposed to be just like that! In place of kosher salt, I prefer to use Knorr Aromat, you can buy some from here and I keep My bouquet garni tied up in a cheesecloth bag for easy removal – buy cheesecloth from here.
For storing long-term, either freeze the demi-glace in ice cube trays or turn it into glace de viande to keep in the fridge. Classical uses for glace de viande include:
Finishing sauces (½ – 1 tsp. transforms a pan sauce); Reinforcing weak stock; glazing roasted meats and as an old-school chef’s “secret weapon” (certainly it is one of MINE!).
Citizens, with My unmatched homemade demi-glace and/or glace de viande at your disposal, you are now part of an unbroken chain dating back CENTURIES – and if you choose the modern version, you are still a “Saucier Supreme“! #BadDoctorStrangePun
For the Brown Stock (this is all you need for the modern version, you can skip all the other recipe parts!):
8lbs. veal marrow bones sawed into 2-inch pieces (your butcher can do this for you)
5lbs. beef marrow bones sawed into 2-inch pieces (your butcher can do this for you)
1lb. elk marrow bones, sawed into 2-inch pieces (can replace with beef bones, if you must) (NOTE - this is a TFD alteration, go with beef bones for classic version)
1 Silkie (TFD's preference), or a Cornish Game Hen, chopped into pieces (head discarded but keep the feet!) (NOTE - this is a TFD addition, omit for classic version)
16oz. tomato paste, TFD endorses Muir Glen brand
2cups chopped onions
2cups chopped leek
1 1/2cups chopped carrot
1 1/2cups chopped peeled celery root
1cup chopped parsnip
4cupsdry red wine - TFD strongly prefers Burgundy as it does not become bitter when reduced
1 bouquet garni, made from Parsley stems (not leaves), Thyme (fresh sprigs) 1 Bay leaf tied with kitchen twine or in a cheesecloth bag
2 tsp. Knorr Aromat
9 whole black peppercorns
16quartsbottled water
***
For the Espagnole Sauce:
1gallonbrown stock hot
***
1 1/2cupsClassic Broken Roux (Roux Brisé) for Espagnole Sauce:
3/4cupclarified butter (or rendered beef drippings, veal fat, or a mix)
3/4cupall-purpose flour
***
1/4cupbacon fat
2cups chopped onions
1cup chopped carrots
1cup chopped celery
Knorr Aromat, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2cuptomato puree
1 bouquet garni, made from Parsley stems (not leaves), Thyme (fresh sprigs) 1 Bay leaf tied with kitchen twine or in a cheesecloth bag
***
For the Demi Glace:
1gallonEspagnole sauce hot
1gallonbrown stock hot
1 bouquet garni, made from Parsley stems (not leaves), Thyme (fresh sprigs) 1 Bay leaf tied with kitchen twine or in a cheesecloth bag
To Make the Brown Stock: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place the bones in a roasting pan and roast for 1 hour. Remove the bones from the oven and brush with the tomato paste.
In a mixing bowl, combine the onions, leeks, carrots, parsnip and celery root together. Lay the vegetables over the bones and return to the oven. Roast for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and drain off any fat.
Place the roasting pan on the stove and deglaze the pan with the red wine, using a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the pan for browned particles. Put everything into a large stockpot. Add the bouquet garni and season with salt.
Add the water and poultry. Bring the liquid up to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer the stock for 4 hours, skimming regularly. Remove from the heat and strain through a China cap or tightly meshed strainer.
If using the modern method for demi glace, stop here and jump straight to stage 18 in the recipe, skipping everything in between. The remaining steps through 18 only apply to the classic method demi-glace!
To Make the Classic Broken Roux (Roux Brisé): Place the clarified butter in a wide, heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Heat until fully liquid and shimmering but not browned. Add the flour – Sprinkle in the flour all at once, and stir with a wooden spatula just until moistened.
Cook gently, let it break! Continue cooking slowly, stirring occasionally—not constantly. The mixture will separate, with fat pooling and flour granules toasting independently. This is intentional – do not emulsify!
Cook until the flour reaches a deep blond to light brown color – the aroma should be toasty, nutty, never acrid. Typical time: 15–25 minutes, depending on heat. Remove from heat and let cool completely. The final texture should resemble damp sand or wet crumbs, NOT paste.
To Make the Espagnole Sauce: In a stock pot, whisk the hot stock into the roux.
In a large sauté pan, heat the bacon fat. Add the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté until wilted, about 5 minutes.
Stir the tomato puree into the vegetables and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the tomato/vegetable mixture to the stock/roux mixture.
Add the bouquet garni and continue to simmer, skimming as needed. Season with salt and pepper.
Simmer the sauce for about 45 minutes. Strain the sauce through a China cap or tightly meshed strainer.
To Make the Demi Glace: In a stock pot, combine the Espagnole sauce, brown stock and bouquet garni, together, over medium-high heat.
Bring up to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and a simmer until the liquid reduces by half, about 1 1/2 hours. Skim the liquid occasionally, for impurities. Season with salt and pepper. Strain through a China Cap or tightly meshed strainer.
If you can’t use up all the demi-glace within 3-4 days, go to step 19 and reduce to glace de viande stage (a glaze) for indefinite storage.
For the Modern Version: Reduce the strained Hirshon brown stock until it coats the back of a spoon. If making glace de viande, proceed to step 19.
If you are not using the demi-glace within 3-4 days, reduce it down and turn it into glace de viande:
•Return degreased stock to a wide, heavy pan
•Reduce at a gentle simmer
•Stir more frequently as volume drops
Watch carefully when it thickens:
•Bubbles become slow and glossy
•Spoon dragged across pan leaves a clear trail
•Hot texture = thick syrup
•Cold texture = solid gel
Final volume is usually 1–2 cups from an entire pot.
•Strain once more if needed
•Chill immediately
•Store refrigerated or frozen in small portions
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