Wine Sauce for Pork Roast

I plan to make a pork “roast” that cooks in wine in the oven when my inlaws are over for dinner soon. If I wanted to use the wine and pork drippings to make a white wine sauce do I need to let it reduce anymore, or would the time in the oven be enough? I have loved the mother sauces tutorials thus far!

I fear I may have dragged my feet too long to be of assistance with your pork roast question and your in-laws may have already visited. If so, I’m sorry about that. I was hoping to try a pork roast out in my kitchen along the same lines so I could have more specific advice to give you, but sadly this hasn’t worked out; and since I’m going to be getting (in conjunction with several friends) 1/4 of a cow in the next couple days, I doubt I’ll be having pork roast anytime in the immediate future. A general (and I hope somewhat helpful) answer to your question would be that it depends on how much wine you’re using.

I’d recommend rubbing the roast with salt and pepper and browning it in a cast iron pan on the stove and adding enough wine to cover the bottom of the pan generously when the roast has been browned on all sides. This will deglaze the fond off of the bottom of the pan and incorporate its flavor into the finished sauce. Perhaps you could put a few sage leaves and a couple of whole allspice in with the wine to infuse it with some extra flavor.

Put the pan in a hot oven and let the meat braise for however long it takes to cook it (that would depend on the size of the roast), checking occasionally to make sure that there’s still sufficient wine in the pan (you don’t want it to all boil away because then it will scorch to the bottom of the pan). When the roast is done, it may be that the wine has sufficiently reduced that all you have to do is strain out the sage and allspice and you’ll have a beautiful sauce. On the other hand, if it’s a little thin still, just put the pan over high heat and stir the liquid constantly until it’s to a better consistency.

Last ditch emergency solution if you’ve way overestimated the liquid and there’s still a ton of it: mix together some cornstarch and water into a slurry and whisk that into the sauce. It’ll thicken it quickly and, because you’ve pre-dissolved the cornstarch, it won’t cause your sauce to have lumps. Just be careful how much you add, because too much slurry will turn your sauce into cement.

Have a question about something food-related? Email me, and I’ll try to respond in an upcoming post.

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