Steak au poivre is a French dish of steak and peppercorns served with a cream or wine sauce. It’s traditionally made with premium boneless cuts of beef, cooked in a fatty substance, and served with vegetables and potatoes. The dish has two competing flavors: the peppercorns and the sauce. The pan sauce recipe is disputed, but typical ingredients include reduced cognac, red wine, or bourbon, shallots, butter, ground mustard, and dark stock. Cream is sometimes added to reduce bitterness. The dish is typically served with a green vegetable and potatoes.
Steak au poivre is a French dish of steak and peppercorns, served with a cream or wine sauce. Traditionally made with premium boneless cuts of beef, this dish literally translates to “pepper steak,” and is often referred to as that. Packed with flavor, it is typically cooked in a fatty substance and plated with a vegetable and potato.
Often reserved for tender cuts of beef like filet mignon, jacket steak is meant to be quite succulent. To achieve the desired juiciness, a restaurant or home chef generally fries the steak in a generous amount of oil or butter. Cooks should avoid using non-stick pans when cooking this dish, as such pans hinder the charred and caramelized effect that should occur. Steaks are typically seared rapidly on both sides before being allowed to rest for several minutes before serving.
Often served rarer than medium rare, this steak dish has two competing flavors that are meant to balance each other out: the peppercorns and the sauce. Black peppercorns are typically used for this dish, as they are easier to find and used in more traditional recipes than the other peppercorn varieties. Other colored peppercorns – such as green, red or white – can also be used individually or mixed together.
As a general rule, depending on how much each consumer likes their steak, the pepper-to-meat ratio should be approximately one teaspoon to one tablespoon of peppercorns to a slab of beef. The large, freshly crushed peppercorns should be able to coat the steak before it is tossed into the pan. Some chefs prefer to cover the steak with peppercorns a few hours before cooking, to allow the flavor to infuse even more.
The traditional barbecued steak has been served with a real pan sauce since at least the mid-19th century. The original pan sauce recipe, however, is disputed by chefs in the 21st century. Regardless of the preparation, the same pan should be used to create the sauce used to cook the steak.
Typical ingredients for stir-fry sauce include reduced cognac, red wine, or bourbon. Other ingredients include the shallots, butter, ground mustard, dark stock, and the frosted bits from the bottom of the pan. Experienced chefs believe that heavy cream does not belong in the traditional oven-baked steak recipe, although many restaurants and home chefs include cream. The richness of a cream sauce has the ability to reduce some of the bitterness left by the pepper crust.
Popular accompaniments for oven-baked steak include a steamed or roasted green vegetable, such as asparagus, or a salad. Potatoes are almost always served along with this French meal. Baked potatoes, French fries – thinly cut French fries – and mashed potatoes are usually picked up as one of the side dishes.
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