How to deglaze, with which liquid?

"Deglazing" is a tесh­nісаl cook­ing term: it is the oper­a­tion of wet­ting the coag­u­lat­ed cook­ing juices at the bot­tom of the pan or saucepan to make a sauce base.

When to deglaze?

This is an impor­tant oper­a­tion to take full advan­tage of the flavours of your dish. Generated dur­ing the Maillard reac­tion, these meat juices caramelise and solid­i­fy at the bot­tom of the pan. They have a dark colour and stick to the bot­tom, but are not burnt.

They are an incred­i­ble con­cen­trate of flavour. In fact, if you taste the lit­tle bit of mate­r­i­al that has clung to your spoon, you can enjoy that. Deglazing allows you to rеlеаѕе all that flavour into your sauce.

The deglaz­ing must be done before these juices burn, above 180°C (356°F). Don't wor­ry, the meat or oth­er ingre­di­ents in the pan will have start­ed to burn before then!

How to deglaze?

Wine or vinegar?

Deglaze with an acidic liq­uid, so that it can ԁіѕѕоlѵе the juices. Acidity is manda­to­ry. On the oth­er hand, you can choose the liquid.

In gen­er­al, white wine is used for white meats, and red wine for red meats.

But you can also use vine­gar, either for taste or to respect halal requirements.

I have a few recipes where I use vine­gar to deglaze, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly my very per­son­al ver­sion of minced poul­try liv­er with eggs and onions.

I choose a flavoured vine­gar, often a rasp­ber­ry vine­gar. Pomegranate vine­gar also gives amaz­ing results.

All the contents of the pan or just the juices?

By reserv­ing what you have just cooked, thus deglaz­ing just the juices, you make a sauce base. By deglaz­ing while the meat is still in the pan, it will soak up the extra flavour, but you will have less liq­uid to make a sauce with!

Go with the spoon

It's usu­al­ly not enough to just pour the liq­uid in and let it do its thing. Scraping the bot­tom and sides of the pan with a spoon real­ly makes up for every­thing. I pre­fer to use a wood­en spoon, which is gen­tler and, at the end, scrape off the last lit­tle bits that stick to the spoon.

If you use a spat­u­la, make sure it's a qual­i­ty sil­i­cone, which won't melt or get damaged…

Do not deglaze the burnt food

Unless you have just a tiny bit of burnt in your pan, remove it before deglazing.

Because :

• acidic prod­ucts are not as effec­tive as that against the burned (Nettoyer casse­role brûlée­ba­sic products[/poison]"] like bleach or bicar­bon­ate of soda instead)
• if you man­age to dis­solve the burnt food, its unpleas­ant taste will mix with the dish or sauce; unless it is vol­un­tar­i­ly and mas­tered as in TopChef, burnt food in cook­ing is not that!

In short, deglazing

• is a mаgісаm tech­nique to take advan­tage of all the cook­ing juices and increase the flavour of your dish or find a sauce base
• is usu­al­ly done with wine, but can be done with vine­gar for halal cooking
• must be done before the food starts to burn, even slight­ly (so below 180°C — 356°F)
• is done with a wood­en spoon or a qual­i­ty spat­u­la.