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Creamy Mushroom Sauce

Built in the pan the steak came out of, in the time the steak needs to rest. Ten minutes, five ingredients that matter.

Prep
5 min
Cook
12 min
Makes
Serves 4
Jump to the recipe
Creamy mushroom sauce simmering in a pan with parsley
Photo: Patrick / Pexels

This sauce exists to use the brown crust left in the pan after searing meat. Those stuck-on bits are the most concentrated flavor in the kitchen and most people wash them down the sink.

Mushrooms go into a hot, dry, uncrowded pan. They are around 90% water, and that water has to leave before browning can start. Add fat and salt at the beginning and you draw the water out into the pan, where the mushrooms then sit and simmer in it — gray, squeaky, and never brown. Dry pan first, wait for the squeak to stop and the edges to catch, then add butter.

Scaled up with stock and grain it becomes wild rice soup.

Deglaze with something acidic. Brandy is traditional, dry white wine works, and even a splash of stock with a squeeze of lemon will do. The alcohol lifts the fond off the base and the acid keeps the finished cream from tasting flat.

It is as good over potato pancakes as it is over steak.

Cream last, and let it reduce properly. Cream straight off the heat is thin and tastes of nothing much; three or four minutes at a simmer concentrates it into something that clings to the back of a spoon.

A jug of creamy sauce beside fresh herbs
Photo: congerdesign / Pixabay

Mushroom cream sauce: the card

Built in the pan the steak came out of, in the time the steak needs to rest. Ten minutes, five ingredients that matter.

Ten ingredients

  • 10 oz (300 g) chestnut mushrooms, thickly sliced
  • 2 tbsp (30 g) butter
  • 2 shallots, finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • ¼ cup (60 ml) brandy or dry white wine
  • ½ cup (120 ml) beef or chicken stock
  • ¾ cup (180 ml) heavy cream
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 tbsp chopped thyme
  • Salt and plenty of black pepper

Dry pan first, cream last

  1. 1 Heat the pan the steak came out of over medium-high, with no added fat. Add the mushrooms in a single layer and leave them.
  2. 2 After 4–5 minutes they will stop squeaking, release their water, and the water will cook away. Only then add the butter and let them brown properly, another 3 minutes.
  3. 3 Add the shallots and cook 2 minutes, then the garlic for 30 seconds.
  4. 4 Pour in the brandy and scrape the base of the pan hard with a wooden spoon. Everything stuck there should lift. Let it reduce almost dry.
  5. 5 Add the stock and reduce by half, then the cream, mustard and thyme. Simmer 3–4 minutes until it coats a spoon.
  6. 6 Season, and pour any juices from the resting steak into the sauce.

On mushrooms and reheating

  • Chestnut mushrooms have more flavor than white. A handful of dried porcini, soaked, turns this into something else again — use the soaking liquid as the stock.
  • It does not reheat well; the cream splits. Make what you will eat.

Gray, rubbery mushrooms

Fat and salt too early, or too many in the pan. Both trap the water the mushrooms need to lose. Dry pan, single layer, patience.