This is the 12th Post in the 31 Posts in 31 Days Challenge that I imposed upon myself. It's been quite a ride so far! Exhausting, but also eye opening and fun at the same time. Only ⅓ of the way through!
Out of all the recipes that I post on this blog (and I admit, that's been dwindling a bit lately), I'm sort of shocked that there are hardly any steak recipes.
Oh sure, there are the ones from a couple years ago, back when we lived in the tiny urban condo and couldn't really grill. Back then I found ingenious ways to make fantastic steak, such as the oven-to-pan seared method that reduced a lot of smoke (essential for not setting off the fire alarm for the whole building - oops); using my sous vide machine (often my method of choice); or just simply pan-grilling.
Funny thing is, once we moved into our new townhouse and got an outdoor grill, all those techniques flew out the window.
Bryan bought a super high temperature Weber Summit grill soon after we moved into our house, and it's been our preferred tool for cooking steak.
Except we'd never tried making filet mignon on the grill before. After all, filet mignon has less inherent flavor, and thus it's more often eaten with a sauce. Most sauces benefit from a jus made from the browned bits you get from pan searing a tenderloin. It's harder to make a sauce when you have no jus.
So we thought we'd do an experiment. We invited our friends over for some steak. We divided four tenderloins into two preparations. Bryan would take two of the steaks and cook them on the grill. My friend Peter would pan sear the other two, making a sauce at the same time.
We would then use the sauce to eat with both steaks.
I love this steak au poivre recipe because it's dead simple. I hate having to gather a bunch of random ingredients when there's already so much stuff going on. This particular recipe only requires a few ingredients: kosher salt, peppercorns, butter, oil, cognac, and some heavy cream.
Easy. No need to chop shallots. No need to look for beef stock. It's so easy.
First step is simple. Remove the tenderloins from the refrigerator about an hour before you plan on cooking them so they can come to room temperature. Liberally salt the steaks on all sides.
Meanwhile, crush the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. Once complete, put the peppercorns in a plate and coat the steaks with pepper on all sides by pressing them into the pile of peppercorns.
Set aside.
Bring a grill pan or normal cast iron pan to medium heat and melt the butter and oil. When the butter/oil mixture begins to smoke, add the steaks and begin cooking. In my case, open the windows and stand guard near the fire alarm in case it goes off!
Cook for about 4 minutes on each side for medium rare. Set aside, tent with foil and let the steak rest. Pour off any excess fat, but keep all the tasty browned bits in the pan! That's where your flavor is going to come from!
Prepare your cognac. Peter wanted me to take a picture of the cognac to show that "we don't use just any cognac."
Pour out about ⅓ of a cup.
Remove the pan from the heat (or just turn off the heat). Gently pour the cognac into the hot pan.
And then ignite!
Whoaaa! Honestly, I am so scared of fire I don't know if I could ever be the one igniting it. Definitely use a long match or a firestick. The flames will die pretty quickly. Shake the pan until the flames completely die.
Turn the heat back on to medium heat and add the cream. Bring the mixture to a boil and whisk until the sauce thickens to the point that it could coat the back of a spoon. Add another teaspoon of cognac and season to taste with salt.
Note: if you use a grill pan, it will be a little awkward to whisk since the cream and browned bits get encrusted over all the ridges. For saucemaking purposes, a normal cast iron pan works better. However, a grill pan gives you those nice grill marks on the steak. It's sort of your choice what you would prefer.
Add the steaks back in and coat them with the sauce.
And then serve!
Yummmmmm . . . soooo good.
Meanwhile, outside in the backyard, Bryan had cooked up two other filet mignon pieces on the grill. He cooked them for quite a short amount of time, about 1 ½ minutes per sides on a super hot flame (close to 700 ° F!).
We each got a piece of each style. The one on the left is the grilled steak. The one on the right is pan seared.
Can you guess which one was favored?
Even though the grilled was ever-so-slightly overcooked (due to the fact that the grill was a tad too hot), everyone preferred the smoky char that you can only get on a grilled piece of meat. The pan version was delicious, and we wouldn't have had the fantastic creamy cognac sauce had we not made a pan seared steak. However, we all much preferred the crispy, slightly charred smoky crust from the grilled steak.
I've read some recipes that suggest getting a cheap "throw-away" steak to use to make the sauce. Buy a tough cut that has a lot of flavor, and use that to make the pan sauce. Grill the tenderloins, and then use your pan sauce on the grilled steaks. Best of both worlds!
Most importantly, begin with good steak. We spotted some beautiful USDA prime filet mignon steaks at Costco several months back. The marbling on those steaks were superb, so we snatched some up and kept them in the freezer until we had a good day for grilling.
Now that the weather is starting to get better, I'm definitely looking forward to a lot more grilling!
Steak Au Poivre
Alton Brown
Link to original recipe
Ingredients
4 tenderloin steaks (filet mignon)
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons whole peppercorns, crushed with a mortar and pestle
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
⅓ cup cognac, plus 1 teaspoon
1 cup heavy cream
1. Remove the tenderloins from the refrigerator about an hour before you plan on cooking them so they can come to room temperature. Liberally salt the steaks on all sides.
2. Crush the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. Once complete, put the peppercorns in a plate and coat the steaks with pepper on all sides by pressing them into the pile of peppercorns. Set aside.
3. Bring a grill pan or normal cast iron pan to medium heat and melt the butter and oil. When the butter/oil mixture begins to smoke, add the steaks and cook for about 4 minutes on each side for medium rare. Set aside, tent with foil and let the steak rest. Pour off any excess fat, but keep all the tasty browned bits in the pan!
4. Remove the pan from the heat (or just turn off the heat). Gently pour the cognac into the hot pan and ignite. Shake the pan until the flames die.
5. Turn the heat back on to medium heat and add the cream. Bring the mixture to a boil and whisk until the sauce thickens to the point that it could coat the back of a spoon. Add another teaspoon of cognac and season to taste with salt.
6. Add the steaks back in and coat them with the sauce.
7, Serve!
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