Quick Honey Dijon Pork Sauce
I made a sweet & mustardy pork sauce recently and felt a need to share the recipe. The secret lies in creating your own fortified stock at home, and saving some in the freezer for whenever you want to make a quick sauce. The recipe below is intended for roughly 2 large sauce portions.
Ingredients
- 3/8 cup fortified homemade pork stock
- 1 Tbsp corn starch
- 1.5 Tbsp cold water
- 1 Tbsp salted butter, cold cut into pieces
- 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 1/8 tsp ground cayenne powder (optional)
- Kosher salt & freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Bring the stock to a boil on the stove.
- Combine the corn starch and cold water and stir until the mixture reaches the consistency of whole milk.
- Pour half of the corn starch mixture into the boiling liquid and whisk quickly to combine.
- If more thickening is desired, add the remaining corn starch and water mixture.
- Remove the sauce from the heat.
- Stir in the cold butter and mix until the butter is emulsified into the sauce.
- Stir in the Dijon mustard and honey.
- Add cayenne powder or red pepper flakes if you want some heat in your sauce.
- Taste and season with kosher salt & freshly-ground black pepper.
- Add more Dijon mustard or honey if desired.
- Serve sauce warm, over a beautifully-cooked piece of pork.
Notes
The recipe above uses pork stock to make a pork sauce. However, you can easily use whatever type of meat stock you like to create a sauce that pairs nicely with your protein. For example, the same approach outlined above works great if you use fortified chicken stock to make a honey Dijon chicken sauce to serve with chicken.
To make the pork stock I used for this sauce, I started with some storebought stock, and added carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves, pig ears, pig spine, and pig trotters. I then cooked this mixture down for ten hours. The final result was extremely collagen-heavy and incredibly flavorful.
If you are making your own stock, after it is strained, try pouring it carefully into ice cube trays and freezing them. You can then store the frozen stock cubes in a Ziplock bag in your freezer, using a cube or two whenever you need it.
To make the pork stock I used for this sauce, I started with some storebought stock, and added carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves, pig ears, pig spine, and pig trotters. I then cooked this mixture down for ten hours. The final result was extremely collagen-heavy and incredibly flavorful.
If you are making your own stock, after it is strained, try pouring it carefully into ice cube trays and freezing them. You can then store the frozen stock cubes in a Ziplock bag in your freezer, using a cube or two whenever you need it.