Steak au Poivre
Steak with French Style Pepper Sauce
Servings: 4 Servings
Ingredients
- 4 tenderloin steaks or NY strip steaks see notes
- Kosher or Himalayan pink salt
- 2 tablespoons whole peppercorns crushed (more if needed)
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup Cognac or Brandy
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- fresh thyme
- 1 tablespoon shallots finely chopped (optional)
Instructions
Steak
- Trim any fat off of the steaks. Salt steaks and allow to sit out for 30 minutes.
- Crush peppercorns either with mortar and pestle, a course grind on pepper mill. If you have neither, place between towel and crush with mallet.
- Put crushed peppercorns on flat plate and place steak on peppercorns until both sides are coated.
- Heat butter and oil in frying pan on medium high.
- Add steaks to pan and cook on each side 3 to 4 minutes to get a good sear. Remove steaks from heat and from pan. Place in oven in a different pan to finish off to get desired temperature. Medium rare will between 130-135 F.
Peppercorn Sauce
- If you want to add shallots, soften these first before adding in water. You may need to add another tablespoon of butter to do this. Shallots are an option.
- Using same pan you cooked steaks in, add a tiny amount of water to stir up the bits from the bottom of pan. You can use broth if you happen to have some available, but no reason to open a whole box for this.
- Take off the stove and have a lid ready, as you add cognac to the pan. Adding in any alcohol to a hot pan with fat can produce a geyser effect so immediately place a lid on and wait a few seconds. You can flambé the cognac to burn off the alcohol or just heat for several minutes on stove on low, which will also burn off the alcohol. Make sure that is done before adding cream.
- Add some fresh thyme, on the stem, which you will remove later.
- Add in heavy cream and continue to stir until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Stir in Dijon mustard. Season with Salt.
- Remove thyme. Pour over steaks. Serve immediately.
Notes
You can make 4 tenderloin steaks or preferably medallions. You can also use New York Strip steaks. Doneness will be determined by thickness of the steaks, so please use meat thermometer.