Espagnole Sauce RecipeI recently had a go at making my own Escoffier demi-glace. If you’re sticking to the the true Escoffier version of demi-glace then you will be needing a recipe for Escoffier’s espagnole sauce, one of the 5 mother sauces. Many chefs today skip the espagnole sauce stage when making demi glace, but I really wanted to do according to the master.

The issue I had was finding an espagnole sauce recipe that I could easily translate to the volume of stock I had made. Since I spent 16 hours making stock and a 2nd stock from the same bones (remouillage) I didn’t want to make any mistakes.

The issue I had with the espagnole sauce recipe was that the recipe differed substantially from site to site and in fact one espagnole sauce recipe nearly had me make a roux (butter and flour) that 4 times what I needed! This would have been a disaster.

Anyway, enough waffle – I finally found the information I was looking for and am recording it for future reference and for you also if you’re interested.

Espagnole Sauce Recipe Ingredients

  • 1 ltr beef stock (home made is best)
  • 30g butter
  • 30g flour
  • 200g mirepoix (mirepoix are the veggie component of stocks and sauces, see below for the ratio’s):-
    • 30g diced carrot
    • 30g chopped celery
    • 100g diced onion
  • bouquet garni (1 bay leaf and 2 sprigs each of parsley and thyme)

Making the Espagnole Sauce Recipe

  1. Melt butter in the pan, add the mirepoix and saute until slightly brown
  2. Sprinkle in the flour and whisk or stir until there are no lumps – continue to cook until you have a caramel colour
  3. Slowly add the stock a little at a time, stirring constantly
  4. Add the bouquet garni.
  5. Bring to the boil and allow to gently simmer until the sauce has reduced by one third. This should take about an hour.
  6. Pass through a sieve to remove any solids.

And that’s it! To make demi-glace you basically use a quantity of espagnole sauce and the same amount of beef (or traditionally veal if you can get it) stock. You then reduce by half.