Sauté and Deglaze a Sauce

Fish or Meat + a hot pan + liquid = sauté and deglazed sauce

“Sauté-ing” is frying by any other name. You do it in a sauté pan, which is a frying pan by any other name (well, technically it’s larger and has straight sides, but it’s the same idea).

“Deglazing” is a fancy term for cleaning out the meat or fish bits that stick to the bottom of a frying pan with a liquid to make a sauce.

The key here is to use thin cuts of meat or fish, and to cook them quickly to prevent them from drying out.  If the meat’s more than a knuckle thick, that’s about 2cm on my hand, we’re going to put it in a zip lock back and pound it with the back of the frying pan (or a meat hammer or a rolling pin should you have either of those handy) to make it thinner – about 1cm thick. Very therapeutic. This is a super fast way to get dinner on the table.

Here’s what we’re going to do:

  • Season a thin cut of meat or a fillet of fish
  • Cook in a hot pan
  • Take out the meat or fish and let it rest of a moment to bring the juices back into the flesh
  • Pour in a liquid, bubble, and scrape in all the bits on the bottom of the pan
  • Tip over the meat or fish

If you can make that, you can make this:

What would you like to make?