Well, I went out on a limb tonight and did a little experimenting…in Marsala sauce. Anyhow, I wanted something with a little more surprise than the gravy most of us end up getting at restaurants.

One of the reasons you get such a gravy-ish sauce in restaurants is the use of stock in making the sauce. My experiment was mainly centered around ditching old water used to boil beef/fish/chicken, mainly because that’s exactly what I am thinking every time I find out “stock” is part of a recipe.

This should only take around 15 minutes if you’re a hustler in the kitchen.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil 1
1/2 cup purple onions (diced or minced) 2
10-12oz mushrooms (sliced) 3
4-6 tablespoons rye flour 4
1 cup Marsala wine 5
6 toes of garlic (minced) 6
3 tablespoons butter 7
1-2 cups water 8
2 tablespoons black pepper 9
2 tablespoons salt 10

Instructions
The olive oil goes on a saucepan set to medium. Get the onions, garlic and mushrooms sizzling in there. Once the onions and mushrooms are soft, sprinkle the flour evenly over the mix. A couple minutes later, add in the wine, water, butter, salt, and pepper. Stir thoroughly. Continue to let it cook until you get the consistency you like out of it (will not take long).

What to use it on.
Chicken – If you can bake a few chicken breasts this is perfect for them. I personally like a little rosemary, thyme, and oregano on mine in this case.
Beef – this stuff is taking the ever-popular sauteed mushrooms and onions for steak and takes it to the next level. Although it works incredibly well on hamburger patties (not joking)
Shrimp – This is a driving factor in the experiment. Grill up some shrimp basted in butter, garlic and oregano. YUM!

So anyhow, if you try this please let me know how it went and if you tried anything different 😉

Happy Cookin’

-Tony

Show 10 footnotes

  1. Real simple, use extra-virgin olive oil wherever possible, for for lots of reasons, but I’ll simply say it’s better for you, far cleaner, and doesn’t involve any crazy additives. ↩
  2. The onions make for a better texture for many people when they are minced. More often that not I’ve found that goobs the don’t like onions are usually just have a far bigger problem with the thought that with the taste of them. ↩
  3. You can leave the mushrooms whole by they simply don’t cook as well that way, slicing them lets them cook far faster. ↩
  4. I like rye flour because I am often a pretentious asshat in the kitchen and very set in my ways…but I like the taste it brings far more than the bleached stuff everyone else uses. ↩
  5. If you’re spooked by Marsala wine, you can get away with a large number of different things, just use your head though, Marsala wines are very broad in flavor. You can find an absolute TON of substitutes on LoveToKnow (link here). ↩
  6. There is just no topping fresh garlic toes, I do suggest a mincing machine though…takes all the work out of doing it by hand. ↩
  7. Don’t use fake butter. If there is only margarine in the casa, don’t bother. Fake stuff doesn’t work. ↩
  8. Knowing you used filtered water for this endeavor will actually make me sleep better at night, just sayin’. ↩
  9. There is nothing like freshly ground pepper. Try it against that crap in a can…you’ll see. ↩
  10. If you absolutely have to cook with salt, do it with the best. Sea salt only has a tiny fraction of sodium compared to the table crap we’re fed normally. If you are a salt-lovin’ fool, I highly recommend this for you, it will keep you from keeling over from the sodium overkill. ↩