Red Wine Reduction Sauce For Steak

If you are making a steak, you must try my Red Wine Reduction Sauce! This sauce is flavorful, rich, and the perfect pairing to a pan-seared or grilled steak. It uses the drippings from the steak as the base and fresh ingredients that complement each other so well to bring it all together. And, it takes under 10 minutes to make!

Best Red Wine Sauce for Steak

If you know anything about me, you know I love cooking steak for my family. It is a constant feature in my household, from grilled chuck steak to gorgeous pan-seared ribeye. One of my favorite additions to steak is to make a mouth-watering sauce with it. This red wine reduction sauce is the result of wanting a beautiful sauce to serve with a cut of ribeye! All those delicious brown bits you scrape up from the bottom of the pan, and the drippings, are just what you need to make the base of a beautiful reduction sauce. Garlic and shallots concentrate the flavors built up in the pan. The red wine reduces to thicken and intensify those flavors, and the balsamic vinegar adds the perfect touch of sweetness and tangy that pair so nicely with a perfectly cooked steak. You will not believe how easily this sauce comes together! The lovely, rich deep red notes look fabulous in a dish on the table or ladled over sliced steak right on the plate. I guarantee you’re going to love it.

What type of wine should I use?

Depending on the type of wine you select, different notes are added to the sauce. I prefer to use a full-bodied reds like Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. These wines have rich and fruity notes of cherry, plum, and currants that work nicely with steak. Some dry red wines also add spicy notes like that pepper, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, anise, ginger, or cardamom. These wines typically come from Syrah, Grenache, Petite Syrah, Malbec, or Zinfandel grapes. For the lightest version of this sauce, you can use a Pinot Noir, Chianti, or French Cotes du Rhone. These wines are typically lighter and have earthy notes, like that of oak or smoke because the skins of the grape are thinner. Whatever flavors sound best to you are what you should use for your red wine reduction sauce.

Wine Sauce Recipe Ingredients

drippings from steak minced garlic or garlic pasteminced shallots or red onionsred wine of your choice, or equal amounts beef stock if not using winebalsamic vinegarfresh thyme beef stockparsley leavesbutter

How to Make Red Wine Sauce

Steak Sauce Recipe Tips

A drinking wine rather than a cooking wine works best for red wine reduction sauce.If you are making this recipe and you do not have steak drippings, you can substitute 1 Tablespoon butter to melt in the pan before adding the garlic and shallots. When making a pan sauce, always monitor your heat. If the sauce breaks, it is likely because the smoking point of the fat was too high when the wine was added. If you notice the sauce starting to break, immediately remove from heat and begin to whisk vigorously.