Making demi-glace on a gas grill (recommended)

This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Save 10% on a website or domain with my code raia. So, it occurred to me that if you have an outdoor gas powered grill, then you have a very convenient way to make demigloss or any kind of long simmering stock. The grill can handle the large volumes involved. It can hold a low, steady temperature, basically forever, and it keeps all the very intense smells involved completely outside your house. It's a hazy definition, but most folks would agree that demigloss is some kind of highly reduced dark meat stock. sometimes beef, but preferably ve bones are not a thing I can buy at the store. So, I still do what Chef John taught us years ago. And I combine chicken wings with whatever cheap bony beef parts I can get. A little oil to get it roasting along with whatever aromatic vegetables I've got on the grill. The chicken effectively lightens the adult cattle flavor and color. It makes it a little more mild like ve and wings in particular are cheap and full of collagen which makes for a really glossy, sticky, gelatinous glaze at the end. I really don't care if I've got stuff stacked on itself. Nothing has to be perfect here. It's all getting strained out in the end. Just get it started. I'm going to simmer in this big disposable aluminum tray that I've got. And the most convenient way to brown my tomato paste is going to be right on the bottom. Classically, demigloss is a reduction of ve stock and sauce espanol. Sauce espanol is a dark meat stock made with aromatic vegetables, tomato paste, and a flour rue. I normally don't use any flour in demigloss, but I'll try it this time. Also, a thin layer on the bottom. Let's move the meat around. I want to use moderate heat on my grill because any burned flavors will get concentrated in the reduction and kind of ruin the final sauce. Golden brown like that is perfect. Dark brown chicken skin can taste a little like burnt hair. Close her up. Yes, I'm sure this smells very interesting to you, dog. Like 10 minutes later, let's move some more stuff around. Nice color on that oxtail bit. Again, I'd rather go slowly than risk any serious burning. It's taking like 45 minutes to brown all this stuff off, but it's real easy. All the smoke is staying outside. That's fat dripping down onto the burner tubes. I wonder if the final glaze will have a subtle grilled flavor to it. That's ample color on everything. I'mma pull it back out to the pan right on top of the flour and tomato. If any little pieces got super burned on the grill, we'll consider leaving them out. That disposable pan goes right back on the grill. And I'm going to leave it there dry for a few minutes just to roughly brown the tomato paste and the flour on the bottom. Is this the best way to do that? No. Is this the easiest way in this particular situation? Oh, absolutely. And you can poke through and see what's happening on the bottom just to make sure that nothing burns down there. Okay. Now, I will fill this most of the way up with water. Most of the way. Remember that water will expand as it heats. And if it boils over, you're losing a percentage of your flavor. I'll tent with foil to minimize evaporation. And we won't need as much heat anymore. But rather than turn all three of my gas burners to low, I'm going to leave the middle one on high and then turn the other two off. One burner on high is less likely to be blown out by the wind. That can happen to gas burners on low. And I do plan to leave this minimally attended for 24 hours. I mean, I'mma check it obviously to make sure that I've got the right heat level. I want a gentle simmer. And I'll also need to top off the water from time to time. But if you keep the bubbling gentle and if you keep it covered, you should get minimal evaporation, which is important because if it dries out in there, all of your solids will burn. The real advantage of the gas grill is that it's continuous. It won't cycle or auto shut off like an electric burner might. A charcoal fire would be fine, but it would take a lot of work to maintain. I'm not sure what the ideal cook time is, but it's been more than 24 hours on this batch. And for what it's worth, the best batches I've ever made have been the longer cooked ones. 16 hours doesn't seem to be as good. The bones should break almost effortlessly. In addition to dissolving the collagen, I suspect that super long cooking causes some protein breakdown into free glutamates. My longer cooked batches have had noticeably more umami, so I think that's what's going on there. Strain out the bulk of the solids however you want. Big bowl for the liquid. A strainer. And normally I'd use cheesecloth on top. I don't have any right now. So, let's see if paper towel works. Paper towel does not work. It just gets clogged up. Oh well, most of the particles that got through the strainer will float to the top and solidify into the fat that we're going to skim off or they will sink to the very bottom where we can just leave them behind. Be sure to juice your solids a little. There'll still be a lot of liquid clinging to them and it's all gold dust. Okay, these spent solids I will dump in the garbage so that the raccoon can climb in there and eat it tonight, which he definitely will do. Love my trash panda. You want to cool this liquid down as fast as possible because it's so hospitable to bacteria. The easy way is to just fill the sink up with water, maybe some ice cubes, and then just set the bowl in there, stir it a bit to promote heat exchange via the metal. I like how thick this stuff looks already before we've even reduced it. That's from the flour. You certainly wouldn't want it any thicker at this stage because we need the fat to be free to rise to the top and to solidify overnight in the fridge. Actually, depending on the lipid composition of the animals that you boiled, you might need to slip this in the freezer for a bit to get that fat solid enough to scrape off. There's less fat in here than I normally get, I suppose, because we rendered so much of it out when we grilled the meat. You don't have to scrape off every last gram of it. And forgive me, but whenever I cook a large gelatinous mass, I am obligated to smack that, smack that, etc. Time to reduce. And this is a heatsafe bowl, so I'm just throwing it right back on the grill. I suppose I'll reduce it down by maybe half or until it is halfway to achieving the texture of a glaze, which is all demiglass means. I like that I don't have to reduce it quite as much because I've got the flour in there. I suspect there's a point at which reduction ceases to yield noticeable increases in flavor. Like there's a flavor saturation point beyond which further reduction only gets you changes in texture rather than flavor. So I'm happy to reduce this less than I normally need to to get a semiglaze texture. Here I'm making a border sauce for my actual Christmas dinner. I've got shallots in a red wine reduction. Ladle in some of my demigloss. Season and reduce it to an all the way glaze. Demiglass makes sauces taste extremely meaty and it gives them a sticky smooth texture. And I do think this batch tastes subtly of the grill. Finish with butter. And there we go. Not for a video, just natural lighting. That was my actual Christmas dinner. A simple affair. The rest of the glaze goes in the ice cube trays. This way you can just pull out a cube or two the next time that you're making a pan sauce and your house will transform into a killer French beastro. If you can't get those back out again, just dip them into warm water for a sec. They'll slide right out and there you go, a real meat glaze. And I didn't have to make the house stink like boiling dead animals for 2 days just to get this. Nothing should have to stink about making and running a website either. It's easy to juice up your online presence with a cube or two of Squarespace. Sell products, sell content, sell your time. Do it all in one place on your own terms with a Squarespace site. They are easier than ever to build. With design intelligence, the computer can do so much more for you automatically. And most everything else is drag and drop. Squarespace payments of course lets you take your customers money. There's invoicing tools. There's SEO tools updated for the era of AI search. Squarespace can help the chat bots find your site. It's free to start building something anytime, but when it's time to pay to publish or to register a domain, give your old buddy goose a happy holiday and save yourself 10%. Use my code regusia at checkout. Thank you Squarespace. And thanks again to Chef John of Food Wishes who first inspired me to juice my own meat. Yes, I know how that sounds, but come on. That's that's what we're doing here. We're juicing meat.