Meat juices, or pan juices, are concentrated flavors that accumulate at the bottom of a pan when cooking meat. They can be used to make sauces and gravies, and it’s best to accumulate as many drippings as possible. When sautéing, the browned areas of the pan contain the most flavor and can be incorporated into a sauce. The juices contain fat, but lean meats can still produce flavorful juices for low-fat gravies.
In cooking, seasonings or pan juices are the juices that accumulate at the bottom of the pan when meat is roasted, fried, or sautéed. Sometimes you’ll see the word drip applied to other foods that secrete liquid during cooking. Meat juices tend to have an extremely concentrated flavor and are very useful for making sauces or gravies that suit the meat you’ve cooked. It is a combination of meat blood and excess fat that drips off the meat as it is cooked.
If you plan to make gravies or sauces from pan juices, it’s a good idea when roasting meat to accumulate as many drippings as possible. It can help if you place the meat on a rack over the skillet or place it in the skillet, so the cooking meat doesn’t soak up the drippings or block them. Using a rack will help you make the most juice, while producing plenty of flavor for gravy or sauce.
When you’re sautéing you clearly can’t jump on a shelf, but you can still build up a good amount of meat juices. You’ll notice that the areas of the pan that have been covered by the meat are often brown and thick and almost hardened. Don’t discard this part, as it isn’t burnt and will actually contain the most flavor. When making gravy or salsa, simply add the liquid of your choice, such as wine, water, or broth, over high heat and scrape up these toughest dripping areas. This will loosen up these flavorful bits, which can then be incorporated into a gravy or sauce by whisking vigorously.
Some people also like to use the juices in the pan, as they contain oil, to saute other ingredients that will be combined in a dish. Again you may want to loosen the drips with some liquid. For example, if you are making chicken piccata, after sautéing the chicken, you can add mushrooms and other vegetables to the pan to make it cook quickly and take on the delicious flavor of the dish.
The drops contain a lot of fat, as fat when exposed to heat tends to melt to a certain extent. The use of fruit juices is therefore not without defects even if it has many tasty virtues. When you cook lean or skinned meats, you’ll have fewer juices, but they’ll generally be low in fat and will be mostly made up of the blood and moisture from the meat that exudes during the cooking process. This can still be wonderfully flavorful and make good sauces and low-fat gravies.
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