Meat glaze is a concentrated, gelatinous syrup made by simmering meat broth for hours. It adds flavor and body to sauces and dishes, has a long shelf life, and can be made at home with beef broth or bouillon.
Meat glaze is a thick syrup that forms when cooks concentrate meat broth or stock by simmering the liquid for a few hours. Also known as glace de viande in French, it adds more flavor to a sauce or lends a lovely glossy coat to finished dishes. With a high salt content and a gelatinous feel, this dark brown sauce adds body to stews and braises. It has a very long shelf life and can be frozen indefinitely or refrigerated for about three months. An inexpensive way to store large quantities of broth for a long time, it can add flavor to any dish in a pinch.
Even a spoonful of glace de viande adds more richness to soups and other preparations. When shopping for meat glazes in stores, it’s best to go for unsalted ones because salted versions increase the salt content of any preparation. It’s fairly easy to make at home, although it takes a bit of time, and involves reducing the beef stock until you get a syrup-like consistency. To make an authentic meat glaze, home cooks concentrate the broth to one-thirtieth of its original volume – the demi-glace comes to one-fifteenth.
The ingredients needed for the meat glaze are beef broth or bouillon; some recipes also add meat juices and steak drippings for a richer flavor. Beef is the most common meat used to make meat glaze, although any other type works well. The cooks combine all the ingredients in a large pot and set it on the stove. By placing the pot slightly off-center and holding it over a simmer, the bubbles will rise up one side of the mixture. The broth simmers for a couple of hours and the cook frequently deglazes the foam and fat with a ladle.
When the mixture has reduced to half its volume, the cook removes it from the heat and strains the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer. Then, the mixture returns to the stove and reduces further. The cook strains the liquid one more time when it is reduced by half again and then continues to concentrate the mixture over moderate heat one last time. The meat glaze is ready when all of the water in it has evaporated and is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon with a glossy coating.
At this stage, the glaze has a syrup-like consistency due to the heat. The cook removes the pan from the heat and transfers the meat glaze to plastic jars after it cools. The icing becomes springy and slightly firm when refrigerated. Cooks cut it into uniform pieces and use it in place of bouillon cubes to give more body to the broth.
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