Mushroom White Wine Sauce
Roasted Vegetables, crispy potatoes, seared fish, steaming rice, sometimes your weeknight staple could just use a bright, savory, unctuous boost. One of my favorite go-to’s in this respect is a mushroom white wine sauce. Creamy consistency, intense umami from the mix of mushrooms, onions, shallots, and garlic, as well as a kick of brightness and complexity from the white wine, this sauce is so incredibly delicious, and so incredibly versatile! Make it from scratch, or make it from the leftover juices in a pan after cooking some vegetables/fish, this sauce comes together in minutes and brings everything it touches to that next level.
Check out the recipe below!
Yield : 1 1/2 cups
Ingredients
8 oz of Mushrooms: thinly sliced. We recommend baby bella, cremini, or white buttons
2 tbsp Butter Replacement
1/2 cup Dry White Wine: plus more for you
1 Shallot: very finely chopped
1/2 White Onion: very finely chopped
2 Cloves of Garlic: finely minced
1 tsp Lemon Zest: finely grated
Salt: to taste
Black Pepper: freshly cracked, to taste
5-7 Fresh Sage Leaves: You can also add parsley, in which case I would finely chop it.
1/4 Cup Cashew Cream or 1 tsp Arrow Root or 1 tsp Corn Starch: If you use corn starch or arrow root, dissolve these into 1/2 cup of warm water. These variations are all to be used as thickening agents.
Preparation:
Heat a large pan on medium-low heat and add your butter.
Add your onion and shallot with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring every 2 minutes or so, until the onions and shallots have clarified. You want to be sure to stir and keep the heat low as to not significantly brown anything.
Once your the onion and shallot have cooked down, add in your garlic and stir.
After 2-3 minutes, add in your mushrooms, stir well, and add another pinch of salt (this will help the mushrooms release their water). Cook for 10-15 minutes on medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have lost a lot of their water, have softened significantly, and have taken on some color.
Add your sage leaves whole, these will be pulled out once the sauce is complete.
Add your wine and thickening agent and stir to combine.
Pour yourself a glass a wine, this is going to take 15-20 minutes to reduce on medium-low heat. Be sure to stir occassionally.
After 15-20 minutes, check your sauce! If its too thin, continue to reduce it on medium-low heat, if its gotten too thick, add a little splash of water, stir, and reassess. It will likely need salt, now is a good time to finish seasoning. If it needs a little brightness and/or acidity (which it may if your wine is very mellow), add a squeeze of lemon juice!
Before serving, fish out the sage leaves.
Enjoy!
Best Practices:
As always:
Avoid packaged produce, or really anything packaged for that matter. This is not to say that you’ll always have the option, but when you do, go for it! For example, you may sometimes see mushrooms plastic-wrapped or onions in plastic-mesh. These are all very often available sans any container, so take the opportunity to use your hands, smell the produce, build that relationship with your ingredients!
Try to bring your own bags when you go shopping for these ingredients
Make sure you’re not buying more than you think you’ll reasonably use! Ingredients like the sage and mushrooms will not last very long, so make sure you buy with care! However, ingredients like onions, garlic, and shallots can last a long time in your pantry (but not forever), so if you buy more than you need, you’ll likely have plenty of other opportunities to use them.
These ingredients have been chosen with several things in mind:
Most of these ingredients are household staples that are relatively inexpensive and last a long time. If you don’t already have white wine or any of the listed thickening agents, these are amazing staples in any pantry and can add so much flavor to any number of recipes/dishes.
The mushroom sauce can so easily pair with any number of fresh herbs, so we encourage you to try new things and be creative!
This recipe opts for vegan-butter-alternatives, however, you may have access to a sustainable dairy farm local to your town/city. We encourage you to learn about your local producers and make the right choice for you!
Did you enjoy this recipe? Let us know! If you really loved it, share it on social media and tag us (@groundedgrub), or, better yet, share it with your friends and family!