Steak in Black Pepper Sauce

Pepper sauce

This famous French recipe (Steak au Poivre) is basically a tasty grilled or fried tender steak in a simple Black Pepper sauce. It is similar to my Steak Diane recipe, but still very different in taste. Sometimes the only steak sauce recipe to go with steak is a black pepper sauce.

This simple black pepper sauce recipe reminds me very much of one of my yearly golfing trips to Belgium. I used to go every year with a big group of friends and we would play some of the super Belgian courses. The weekends always resulted in a fair amount of drinking and eating.

Belgian Steaks

One year, when playing de Rougemont, we ended up near Dinant in a small hotel with a slightly weird hotel owner. He was not very friendly, but when we asked him to whip us up some steaks for supper, he suddenly became a bit more enthusiastic and disappeared to the kitchen.

He came back with some delicious steaks with the most wonderful pepper sauce, which tasted just like the one in this recipe. Belgian steaks are really very tasty, as is most of the food there.

The fun part in this recipe is the flambé bit when the alcohol in the sauce gets burned off.

You can see in this picture what happens when you go a bit too mad on the Brandy 🙂

This is, of course, a bit of a waste really. Better to drink it.

That weekend in Belgium the hotel owners ended up leaving us the key to the bar, which, of course, we had emptied out by morning. Not many straight drives off the tee that morning.

I have again used Sirloin steaks in this recipe, but I suppose this can also be served together with a nice piece of tender rump, fillet or rib-eye steak. According to Wikipedia, steak au poivre is traditionally made with filet mignon, but really you can make this with whatever steak cut you like.

How to make peppercorn sauce

Steak in Black Pepper Sauce

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This recipe will give you a delicious black peppercorn sauce to go with your steak. A good reason not to drink all the brandy...

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 x steaks (Sirloin, Filet Mignon, Fillet, Rib-eye or Rump)
• 2 shallots, finely sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• ¼ cup brandy
• 80 ml cream
• 200ml beef stock
• 2 tbsp butter
• Sea Salt
• Crushed Black Peppercorns

Instructions

1. Make sure you have some good tender steaks. We tend to choose the 30 day aged Black Angus sirloin steaks from Aldi as they are consistent quality and always very tender. Excellent value.
2. First cover your steaks with some baking paper and roll them a bit flatter.
3. Season both sides of the steak with sea salt.
4. Heat the oil and some butter in a frying pan and add the steaks when the oil is hot enough. Brown the steaks on both sides for about 2,5 minutes per side (to give a medium rare steak).
5. The steak cooking times will be dependent on the size and thickness of the steak so follow any instructions on the steak packaging.
   Then remove the steaks from the pan and place on a plate to rest. Throw away the used oil/butter in the pan.
6. Using the same pan, add the shallots and garlic and cook in some butter for about 2 minutes. Then, being very careful, add the brandy to the pan and allow it to ignite.
7. Do this by holding the pan away from you at an angle over the hob (if you are cooking with gas). When the flame dies out, stir the contents around the pan.
8. Pour the stock into the pan and allow it to reduce. Add the peppercorns to suit your taste. I believe this sauce should be quite hot, so I add about 1-2 tbsp.
9. Then add the cream and stir well into the sauce. Keeping the pan on the heat, allow the sauce to thicken, stirring constantly.
10. Then put the steaks back into the sauce with any juice from the meat, and cook further until they are done as you want them.
    

Notes

Serve up with fries or some vegetables. Here I served up with some crinkle chips done in the air fryer- quick and easy.