Published December 18, 2024. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
This delicious classic bordelaise sauce is a rich red wine demi-glace reduction jam-packed with flavor and an excellent accompaniment to all your steak recipes. I first learned how to make this in the restaurant industry, and to this day, it’s one of my all-time favorite beef sauces.
Sauces have the incredible opportunity to enhance further whatever you serve it with. My wife even goes to the next level and usually likes a little meal with her sauce. If you’re similar and want to try out some new recipes, you must try my Chimichurri sauce or mornay sauce.
Bordelaise
Bordelaise sauce is a class French sauce of shallots, herbs, red wine, and demi-glace. It is cooked for a short time to infuse the flavors and then is strained and commonly served with roasted cuts of beef. In the most traditional sense of the recipe, it would be garnished with poached minced bone marrow. While I didn’t do that cooking procedure, I finished the sauce with bone marrow butter.
It’s a vibrant, full-flavored sauce, so a little bit will enhance whatever you plan to serve with it. Or you can take it to the next level, as we did at one of the restaurants I worked at, and make a mushroom bordelaise.
History of Bordelaise
Bordelaise is named after the Bordeaux region, where it was invented in the 18th century. Although it is in Auguste Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire cookbook, the origins of actually creating it are unknown. It’s considered a smaller sauce from the mother sauce, Espagnole.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Demi-Glace – This is the classical sauce needed to make bordelaise. However, you can scale it back with veal stock or beef stock that can be used when you would typically add the demi-glace. You must also thicken the sauce to get to the right consistency using a roux, beurre manie, or slurry.
- Onion – A shallot is the only traditional ingredient used in this sauce. However, a white, yellow, red, or sweet onion may be used. In addition, I added an optional smashed whole garlic clove.
- Wine – Any dry red wine like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, merlot, or Shiraz is good. In addition, some early known recipes also call for white wine. With that being said, any dry white like chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, or Sauvignon Blanc would work.
- Butter – I always prefer unsalted butter to control the sodium content instead of the butter company.
- Herbs – Fresh thyme and a ½ bay leaf are used while cooking the sauce down. A ½ teaspoon of dry thyme leaves can be substituted. In addition, parsley may also be added to the sauce as it cooks down.
- Seasonings – Coarse salt and roughly cracked peppercorns are used to flavor this.
How to Make a Bordelaise Sauce
Add the butter to a medium-sized saucepot over medium heat.
Once melted, add the shallot, garlic clove, and crushed peppercorns.
Sauté everything for only 3 to 4 minutes or until lightly browned. You can push this further by turning the heat down to low and doing a full caramelization, which would take 25 to 30 minutes, depending on how much time you have. This process will make the sauce more aromatic and bring out more flavors.
Next, pour the red wine and cook until it is reduced by 75%. There should be about ¼ cup remaining. The wine flavors will be concentrated and mixed with the shallots, garlic, and peppercorns during this process.
Add in the demi-glace, thyme sprig, and bay leaf. If you are going the alternate route of using beef stock, pour in the 4 cups of stock and cook for 15 to 20 minutes over medium heat. Then, stir in a ½ recipe for beurre manie until it becomes thick. Reduce the heat to low and cook for an additional 10 minutes.
Cook it over low to medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes to concentrate the flavor.
Remove the sauce from the heat and whisk in cold unsalted butter or up the ante using my bone marrow butter recipe.
Season it with salt.
Strain the sauce through a chinois, fine mesh strainer, or cheesecloth.
Try serving it with my New York strip roast.
Make-Ahead and Storage
Make-Ahead: You can make this recipe up to 3 days ahead. Keep cool until it’s ready to use.
How to Store: Cover and keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. You can freeze this for up to 3 months. Thaw it in the fridge for 1 day before reheating.
How to Reheat: Add the desired bordelaise to a small saucepot and heat over low heat until hot. If the sauce is too thick, add a splash of stock or water to loosen it up.
Chef Notes + Tips
- Deglazing adds liquid (like wine) to a hot pan to loosen the flavorful browned bits stuck to the bottom. This adds depth to your gravy, so don’t skip this step.
- If this sauce seems a bit too complicated, given what you need, feel free to try my scaled-back version for beef gravy.
- Classically, bordelaise is finished with butter and bone marrow. I killed two birds with one stone with my compound butter.
- If you aren’t interested in browning the shallots, garlic, and peppercorns, pour the wine into a pot with these ingredients and reduce the heat to medium.
- When using just beef stock, you can reduce it down until it’s about 1 cup without using a thickening agent. This reduction will make the sauce naturally thicker.
More Sauce Recipes
Bordelaise Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1 peeled small diced shallot
- 12 to 15 peppercorns
- 1 smashed garlic cloves
- 1 cup dry red wine
- 4 cups demi-glace
- 1 sprig of fresh thyme
- ½ bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons bone marrow butter, regular butter is fine
- coarse salt to taste
Instructions
- Add the butter to a medium-sized saucepot over medium heat.
- Once melted add the shallot, garlic clove, and crushed peppercorns.
- Sauté everything for only 3 to 4 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Next, pour the red wine and cook until it is reduced by 75%. There should be about ¼ cup remaining.
- Add in the demi-glace, thyme sprig, and bay leaf.
- Cook it over low to medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes to concentrate the flavor.
- Remove the sauce from the heat and whisk in cold unsalted butter, or up the ante by using my bone marrow butter recipe.
- Season it with salt.
- Strain the sauce through a chinois, fine mesh strainer, or cheesecloth.
Bordelaise Sauce Recipe