Come check out this Danish Viking Smoked Salt Pan Sauce I made last night …
This all started earlier in the day when I stopped by the butcher to pick up dinner. We hadn’t had a beef roast in a while, what the hell? I picked out a nice beef ball-tip roast.
I made a marinade with fresh rosemary from the garden, garlic from Big D’s garden, extra virgin olive oil, some cabernet, a splash of balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper, paprika and some onion bits. This sat out lolling around for two hours. Turning it over and over is important, I think. You want every surface happy.
Put the roast in a baking dish with a rack underneath. Oven is at 350 and cook until maybe 135 to 140 degrees internal temperature. Pull and let rest with shiny foil down loosely.
LOOK AT THE FLAVOR (fat and bits) lolling around in the bottom of your roasting pan! Dice up a shallot super small and saute it a bit in the fat. Not so it browns, but translucent. I added a spade of lard to round out the flavor of the sauce, but you can use butter in a pinch. While the shallots are doing their thing, attempt to scrape free some bits from the pan.
Move this slurry to another pan. If you want to. There were some slightly burned bits in my pan and din’t want to see them in my sauce. So over to the new pan it all went.
Get it hot again. Add a tablespoon of corn starch or so. Just enough to make a MEAT TASTEY PASTE.
Add a splash of the hearty red wine (good nice happy wine please, no tramp wine) and stir around. Add a cup of chicken broff or so. Stir and let it simmer. Keep adding liquid until it is the consistency you like. Thick or thin it doesn’t matter, just make sure you let it simmer for a bit.
Taste it.
Crush up a bit of the Danish Viking Smoked Salt and add it. Fresh ground black pepper too.
Note: Danish Viking Smoked Salt is the find of the century. There is nothing like it, literally. I know some of you who haven’t tried it are skeptic or just a bit hesitant. Don’t be. Truly this is something to try and get as a standard in your kitchen. The dimension it adds to everything is amazing. It’s subtle, yet forces you to taste your food and a smile creeps up. The flavor inspires you to buy food to put it on. Go now into your kitchen’s spice/herb cabinet and pull out all the bottles/containers that on their own merit push you out your front door to buy a range of meats & vegetables. Oh, what’s that you say? YOU DON’T HAVE ANY? No kidding. Go now and buy some Danish Viking Smoked Salt from the Salt Traders. Please say you heard about it from MeatHenge.com.
Find a sieve and pour the sauce through it into yet another damn pan. Turn on the stove just enough to keep it warm, stir it a bit and taste it. I do a lot of tasting, just to make sure. I ended up adding a tad more Viking Salt.
Here you have it. If it doesn’t seem quite rich enough (mine turned out fine), feel free to add another pat of butter. It really delivers the flavor. And after all, isn’t that what you went through all that for? Flavor?
It should look like this every night.
yes it should. can i come live with you, please!
But is the secret of the secret sauce Viking Salt? I mean, would this meal have been tasty with plain normal salt?
How will you ever know unless you do the experiment?
The readership of Meathenge demands more meat experimentation.
Thank you.
Hmmm, I’ve been running these experiments for quite a few years now and have enough data to surely prove, behind a pork of a doubt, that this sauce tastes just dandy with a kosher salt. However, regular iodized table salt ruins everything.
“Surely getting spam from someone you know and love isn’t quite as maddening.”
The notification is mild and as you said easily deleted.
It’s the getting spam “first hand” in the morning while I haven’t even had my first sip of coffee and you’re bouncing off the walls, eyes bugging out, hollerin’ something about meaty, grilly, yummy, goodness and did I “see the latest entry on MEATHENGE??!?!?!”…
That’s when the vein behind my eye starts to throb.
Oh yeah huh.