Without the red wine, this will no longer be a red wine sauce. Other acids can definitely be used (apple juice, white wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, etc), but obviously the flavor will change. Please check out the lesson on How to Make Pan Sauce. This will be very helpful as we go into great detail about how to vary and build pan sauces from ingredients that have been pan fried. Cheers!

Hi! I bought my first Stainless Steel pan at Sur La Table and I wanted to try it out for this recipe tonight. But I see in the video you used cast iron. Should I use my cast iron pan instead? I don't want to ruin/stain my new pan on the wrong recipe...I heard that stainless is difficult to work with and clean. Please advise the best pan for this recipe? Thank you!

You can use your stainless steel pan. You may also want to check out the lesson on Pan Frying before you use you new pan. Cheers!

I have read other comments about sauce splitting or breaking - In this recipe I think I also added the butter when the pan was still on the heat.

Also, if the butter has come to room temperature does that make a difference?

What about other roux based sauces, why do they break?

The sauce still tasted very good!

Cindy, you may want to watch the lesson on "How to Make a Pan Sauce" in the cooking school as we do go into quite a bit of detail regarding this in that lesson (particularly topic 6 and 7). Many of the same principles would also apply to other roux-based sauces as well. For more on roux-based sauces, you may want to watch the "How to Make a Veloute Sauce" and/or "How to Make a Bechamel Sauce" as well. Cheers!

This is basically a bordelaise sauce, right? Try it by adding mushrooms. the trick to a bordelaise is to reduce the wine to such a point that it is highly concentrated, then add demi-glace, or very strong broth, veal or beef. Yum!

The main difference is that Bordelaise sauce typically contains bone marrow and the wine used is classically from the region of Bordeaux. Cheers!

Just finished eating and had to be one the best steaks I have ever eaten , let alone made all by myself. Very important to reduce wine to surypy consistency before stock is added. I love Rouxbe cooking school , the confidence I have in the Kitchen now is just awesome!!

Thank-you
Ken

I wanted to know if I can make the the red wine sauce ahead of time (like day before and chilled) . If so should I hold off adding butter until that day? I think it may split or separate if cooled and reheated again. I have a big group coming over and cooking space is limited.

No, this cannot be made ahead of time. This is a pan sauce and the sauce relies on the sucs that were formed from pan-frying the steaks (and it is definitely not recommended to cook the steaks the day before). If you have everything prepped in advance, it does not take much time to put the sauce together as the steaks are resting. One thing you can do ahead of time, is to reduce the amount of stock by about half. That way, you won't have to wait for that to reduce much once you add it to the pan. Cheers!