St Jacques Scallops with Foie Gras Sauce Recipe

I first made this scallops with foie gras recipe for our family French Christmas meal and after posting pictures on our Facebook page, we had several requests for the recipe.

This sauce really made the dish! You can serve the scallops and foie-gras sauce with any food (seafood, meat, poultry, or just over pasta or rice…) you’d like: still super simple to do, a surprising combo yet a very tasty one.

Try it and let me know how it turned out!

Ingredients For This Recipe:

Here are the ingredients you’ll need. As I said above, you can pretty much serve this foie gras sauce over anything and it will make it delicious!

1. 4 to 5 Scallops per person (fresh is better but good quality frozen will work too – defrost them in some room temperature milk so they stay white and shinny)
2. A 80 to 100 grams can of “foie Gras de Canard” (Duck Foie Gras – you can usually find some cans at a large supermarket during the Holiday season, or by some online)
3. 2 to 3 tablespoons of heavy cream
4. 2 tablespoons of white wine (either a dry white wine or something a little sweeter will do)
5. A pinch of piment d’Espelette (optional)
6. Some pepper
7. Some salt
8. Some butter

About Foie Gras

So I know that foie Gras is one of those foods with much debate. I’m aware it’s been banned in some places (including California) and I don’t want to debate the ethics of it here but it’s a VERY popular holiday dish in France and is readily available.

It used to be very expensive but you can now find it at any price in even the smallest of French supermarket.  For this recipe, you don’t need top quality Foie Gras since it’s going to end up melted anyways.

The 3 Minute Foie-Gras Sauce

In a small sauce pan under very low heat, put the heavy cream and bring it to temperature. Cut up the foie gras in small pieces and put it inside the cream, gently stir until it has fully melted.  Add the wine and continue cooking on gentle heat.  Do not let it boil or the sauce will separate.

If you want to add a little flavour kick, add a small pinch of piment d’Espelette (or a bit of smoky paprika if you don’t have piment d’Espelette).

Keep the sauce warm.

How to Cook the Scallops

Make sure the scallops are nice and dry by letting them rest on kitchen paper – especially if they were frozen (otherwise, they will be water logged and will not cook as nicely).

Just before you are ready to cook the scallops (and everyone is seated at the table), put a large pan on high flame and let the pan become nice and hot.

When you are ready to cook, drop a bit of butter in the pan and quickly swirl it around (do not let the butter burn – light brown is OK, dark brown is too much).  Add all the scallops to your pan making sure that there’s a little space in between each of them.  While they are in the pan, add a bit of ground pepper and salt to the scallops.

After one minute, start turning the scallops around. They should be nicely golden on one side.  Leave for another 30 to 45 seconds and turn off the heat.

Start placing the scallops on your plate and then drizzle some of the warm foie gras sauce on top, serve right away.

Keep in mind that while you plate and as you serve them, the scallops will continue to cook so follow the old adage that works very well for eggs too: “Done in the pan, overdone in the plate” (“cuit dans la poêle, trop cuit dans l’assiette”)

As you can see on the picture, I chose to serve the scallops with a Porcini Risotto and some glazed carrots, but fresh pasta or rice will do fine as well (make sure you plan a bit more sauce then).

Bon appétit and make sure to let me know in the comments if you made that dish and how it turned out for you!

Here is our scallops and black truffle recipe

And a video on how to open scallops