Dairy-free pan sauce?

Hey folks,

Just got Joule 2 weeks ago and did my first rib eye steaks last night. The only problems is we keep kosher and the large amount of butter in their recipe kept me from achieving total dinner perfection. We use Earth Balance as a butter substitute, but I've noticed that it really doesn't want to emulsify with other liquids.

A chef friend of mine suggested xanthan, but gave no specifics on measurements or ratios. Any help here?

Best!

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Brandon_Byrd_40557

That's a tough one. Xanthan is tricky with pan sauces because as they reduce, the texture can get snotty and gross (as the relative percentage of xanthan in the sauce increases). My suggestion would be to try a roux-based sauce using tallow, schmaltz, or duck fat. The flour in a roux will dull the flavor a bit, but it will produce a classic, gravy-like consistency in the pan sauce that can be quite nice. Using hydrocolloids or emulsifiers like lecithin or glycerides may work too... but it's going to be very tricky to get right (unless I'm overlooking something).

matthewmicahhall

I wonder if a refined coconut oil might be used to mount a sauce in a manner similar to butter. The taste would obviously be different, but the refined version might be relatively neutral for a strongly flavored sauce.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

The problem is that coconut oil lacks the natural emulsifiers that butter has, so the sauce would still break.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Brandon_Byrd_40557, what do you think about switching the flour of a traditional roux for cornstarch? Kenji at Serious Eats posted a cool recipe for a melty cheese sauce on FB recently and mentioned that this sub helped ...

Brandon_Byrd_40557

You can, but the result will be the sort of gloppy, shiny sauce that you find in American "Chinese" food. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Worth a shot. Just be sure to bring the liquid to a boil so the starch fully hydrates.

matthewmicahhall

Good point -- my immediate response to your comment was adding in some lecithin to get emulsifiers back into the system. I decided to do a Google search on "lecithin butter". This resulted in one of those moments where you generate a rather surprising set of search results (i.e., cannabis butter, a.k.a. cannabutter).