Fish or Meat + a hot pan + liquid = sauté and deglazed sauce
“Sauté-ing†is frying by any other name. You do it in a sauté pan, which is a frying pan by any other name (well, technically it’s larger and has straight sides, but it’s the same idea).
“Deglazing†is a fancy term for cleaning out the meat or fish bits that stick to the bottom of a frying pan with a liquid to make a sauce.
The key here is to use thin cuts of meat or fish, and to cook them quickly to prevent them from drying out. If the meat’s more than a knuckle thick, that’s about 2cm on my hand, we’re going to put it in a zip lock back and pound it with the back of the frying pan (or a meat hammer or a rolling pin should you have either of those handy) to make it thinner – about 1cm thick. Very therapeutic. This is a super fast way to get dinner on the table.
Here’s what we’re going to do:
- Season a thin cut of meat or a fillet of fish
- Cook in a hot pan
- Take out the meat or fish and let it rest of a moment to bring the juices back into the flesh
- Pour in a liquid, bubble, and scrape in all the bits on the bottom of the pan
- Tip over the meat or fish
If you can make that, you can make this: