Red Wine Jus | Easy Sauce Recipes (2024)

Easy Sauce Recipes is an Amazon Associate and may receive compensation for purchases made through affiliate links.

My Red Wine Jus recipe is a must-have staple for your kitchen! It's flavorful, rich, and a perfect pairing for a pan-seared or grilled steak. My red wine reduction sauce uses drippings from steak as the base, complemented with fresh ingredients and herbs for an intensely satisfying sauce.

And, it only takes under 10 minutes to make!

Red Wine Jus Recipe

This red wine reduction sauce is the result of wanting a beautiful sauce to pair with a tender, juicy steak! All those delicious brown bits are scraped up from the bottom of the pan, and the drippings are just what you need to make the base of a beautiful reduction sauce.

Making the perfect reduction is just as it sounds: the ingredients reduce as all the flavors intensify. The result is a perfectly silky and concentrated sauce, excellent for serving with steak and beef dishes, but also with lamb, pork, and even roasted vegetables (especially a grilled Portobello mushroom!).

Red Wine Sauce Ingredients

• drippings from steakor butter if you have no drippings
• minced garlicor garlic paste
• minced shallotsor red onions
• red wine of your choiceor equal amounts beef stock if not using wine
• balsamic vinegar
• fresh thymeplus more for garnish
• beef stock
• roughly chopped parsley leaves
• butter

How to Make Red Wine Jus

1. Add steak drippings from a freshly cooked steak to a pan over medium heat. If you do not have steak drippings, melt butter in a cast-iron skillet. Then add garlic and shallots and saute, stirring 1 minute until softened.
   
2. Add red wine, beef stock, balsamic vinegar, and fresh thyme sprigs. Bring liquid to a rapid simmer over medium-high heat.
   
3. Allow the wine mixture to reduce until thickened, approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
   
4. Remove the thyme from the sauce and turn the heat to low. Whisk in butter.
   
5. Add parsley and season with salt and pepper if desired. Serve, and enjoy!
   

Red Wine Sauces Recipe Tips

• Drinking wine rather than cooking wine works best for red wine reduction sauce. Trust me, you will taste the difference in flavor!
• If you are making this recipe and you do not have steak drippings, you can substitute 1 Tablespoon butter to melt in the pan before adding the garlic and shallots.
• When making a pan sauce, always monitor your heat. If the sauce breaks, it is likely because the smoking point of the fat was too high when the wine was added.
• If you notice the sauce starting to break, immediately remove from heat and begin to whisk vigorously.

Choosing a Red Wine for Sauce for Steak

Depending on the type of wine you select, different notes are added to the sauce. I prefer to use full-bodied reds like Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. These wines have rich and fruity notes of cherry, plum, and currants which work nicely with steak.

Some dry red wines also add spicy notes, like pepper, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, anise, ginger, or cardamom. These wines typically come from Syrah, Grenache, Petite Syrah, Malbec, or Zinfandel grapes.

For the lightest version of this sauce, you can use a Pinot Noir, Chianti, or French Cotes du Rhone. These wines are typically lighter and have earthy notes, like oak or smoke because the skins of the grape are thinner.

Whatever flavors sound best to you are what you should use for your red wine reduction sauce!

Red Wine Jus FAQs

What to Serve with Red Wine Sauce

• Reverse-Sear Ribeye Steak
• Air Fryer Prime Rib
• Sous Vide Pork Chops
• Grilled Lamb Chops

If I am individually plating a meal, I think a little pool of red wine sauce on a plate with a juicy steak on top is as Instagram-worthy as it gets! This sauce also looks great in a gravy boat, so each person can add as much sauce as they like. Try pairing my red wine reduction sauce with some of these fabulous recipes!

Easy Sauce Recipes

• Easy Hollandaise Sauce
• Au Jus Recipe
• Asian Marinade
• Lemon Aioli Recipe
• Chimichurri Sauce
• Also learn How to Make Stock!

Check out my all-time favorite sauce recipes here: Easy Sauce Recipes

📖 Recipe