One of the simplest ways to add flavor—not to mention, a more impressive presentation—to your home cooking repertoire is to reduce braising liquid and pan drippings into lush, thick, spoon-coating sauces. It's a simple technique to do: As the contents of your braise (usually a heady concoction of stock, water, beer, or wine, with aromatics and a little bit of fat) evaporate, the remaining liquid becomes concentrated. But mastering the art of reducing sauce requires a little savviness. The best reductions are thick enough so that a line drawn on the back of a spoon with your finger holds without dripping (the fancy French word for that is **nappant). Here's how to fast track your sauce from simple to complex, silky, and spoonable.
1. Go Meatless
Whatever solids are in your pan (chicken as in the picture above), pork shoulder, short ribs, etc.), they're standing in the way of your braising liquid. Remove fully-cooked and tender meat from the pan and let it rest while the sauce cooks over medium heat. Once the sauce has reached your desired consistency, add the meat back in and rewarm it over gentle heat, spooning the sauce over.
2. Go Wide
The more surface area your sauce has to do its thing, the quicker it'll reduce. A large Dutch oven or wide sauté pan will yield the quickest results. Can you reduce in a small sauce pot? Of course. Just keep in mind: The deeper the pan's volume, the longer it'll take to condense and reduce.
As it reduces, the sauce for this sweet-and-tangy Caramel Chicken thickens. Photo: Hirsheimer & Hamilton
3. Divide and Conquer
Need that sauce, like, yesterday? If you're in a hurry, you can really speed up the process by dividing the sauce into two pans (for maximum effect, see point no. 2 and use two wide pans). If you have a lot of liquid to begin with, as in the example of a large batch of braised short ribs, you can just discard a bit of it before you begin reducing.
4. Let It Breathe
Because the point of reducing liquid is to let it evaporate, you're going to want to give that liquid access to the air. So that means keep the pot uncovered, right? Right.
