#098 Elevate your steak game

Make steak au poivre

Hello beautiful people. It's been a while since I've shared a recipe here and there are several new faces who’ve joined us recently, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite steak recipes :)

Steak is one of those foods that's amazing without much effort. You don't really need anything other than a great piece of meat. All I usually add is some fresh rosemary, butter, garlic and it literally cooks itself. Maybe even with a side of caramelized onions if I have the time. 

However, if you want to take things up a notch, or if you simply want (or need) to impress, make steak au poivre. It elevates a steak incredibly well, and thankfully isn't that difficult to make.

Here’s an easy recipe 👇

Ingredients (per person):

• 250g (~8-10oz) grass fed, 1” thick steak of any cut

• 2 tbsp whole peppercorns

• 2-3 garlic cloves, peeled & smashed

• 1 shallot, thinly sliced

• 1-2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

• 2-3 tbsp butter

• 100ml (~1/2 cup) beef bone broth

• 100ml (~1/2 cup) cognac or brandy (optional)

• 2 tbsp heavy cream

• 2 tbsp ghee or tallow

Equipment:

• Stainless steel pan

• Mortar & pestle (or pepper mill)

• Spatula

• Spoon

Method:

1. Seasoning the Steak

• Using the mortar & pestle, move your wrist in a circular motion to break the peppercorns down

• If you’re using a pepper mill, turn the knob at the top to the coarsest setting (rotate anti-clockwise)

• You want the pepper coarse, in big chunks. Don’t worry if some are smaller than the others, the uneven nature will add to the texture

• Dry the steak well and rub the peppercorns all around it. You want to make sure it’s pressed in well so it’s fully coated.

This is how coarse the pepper should be when you season it. The QUALITY of the peppercorns you use matter. Never use pre ground peppercorns. The kick will be non existent. Grind your own, and get tellicherry peppercorns if you can. Gamechanger. Night & day difference.

2. Cooking the Steak

• Get a stainless steel pan on medium-high heat. Coat the pan well with a few tablespoons of ghee or tallow and let it come to temperature

• Just as it’s about to smoke, place the steak in. Lay it away from you slowly and press down firmly. 

• After 2-3 minutes, using a spatula, peel the steak off the pan and flip. It should release itself easily, revealing a beautiful crust.

• Once flipped, let the steak cook on this side for another 1-2 minutes

• Then, add butter, smashed garlic cloves and sprigs of fresh rosemary and start basting the steak

• You want to tilt the pan in such a way that you can scoop the butter and the herbs and pour them over the steak. They should fall back down and you repeat the process over and over again. 

• Do this for about a minute for a rare, medium-rare finish. If aiming for medium & upwards, baste for 1-2 minutes for a total of 3-4 minutes on this side. 

• Takes steak off the pan and let rest on a baking tray.

3. Making the Sauce

• Add the minced shallot and lower the heat to medium, cooking until translucent.

• Turn the flame off and add the cognac to deglaze the pan and scrape off the fond, the browned bits. (Make sure there’s no furniture directly above your pan in case the alcohol ignites. If there is, take it off the burner)

• Add the beef stock and bring the sauce up to a simmer.

• Add the cream, 1 tbsp at a time and stir well to incorporate it in. Throw in a fresh sprig of rosemary and continue to stir.

• Add salt and pepper to taste and continue to let simmer for 1-2 more minutes until it becomes a thick, creamy consistency.

• Once you’re satisfied with the consistency, turn the burner off, add a tablespoon of butter in and stir until it’s melted.

Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Does the cut of steak I use matter?

Yes, there are slight intricacies to take note of. The most important thing will be changing the cooking time depending on the fat % of the steak you choose, which ultimately determines the doneness you’ll have. 

If you’re cooking a ribeye, you can have it more medium but for a sirloin or especially a tenderloin anything more than a medium might get chewy and tough, so it’s generally recommended to cook medium rare at least. Also, if you’re working with anything that’s 1.5”>, it would be wise to finish cooking it in an oven to achieve a consistent temperature (400F for about 3-4 minutes).

2. Why can’t I put the aromatics in earlier?

You don’t want to get the rosemary and garlic in too early as they’ll get destroyed. You want to preserve that fresh hit of rosemary in your steak and you don’t want the garlic to be spent when you’re basting the steak.

3. I’ve heard that it’s wrong to baste a steak au poivre. Is that true?

In my experience, this is not a problem, especially if you pressed the peppercorns in well before cooking. If you however don’t want to baste, you could just cook the steak for longer on that second side or even finish it off in the oven. After flipping, finish it in a preheated 200°C (~400°F) oven for another 2-3 minutes.

4. I notice you didn’t mention salting beforehand. Should we salt or shouldn’t we?

You can either salt the steak for at least an hour before you cook, or not at all. Salt adds depth of flavor by drawing out moisture, which the steak eventually reabsorbs. If you don’t give enough time for the steak to reabsorb it, it defeats the purpose. You could salt it just immediately before cooking, but all you’re doing is surface level seasoning, which you can just add later.

5. Does flambèing (lighting the alcohol on fire) do anything to the dish?

It’s mostly a theatrical stunt done in kitchens to wow diners. You absolutely don’t need to light the alcohol on fire. What you aim to achieve with the cognac or brandy when you deglaze the pan is to give a slight edge to the dish. You can 100% achieve a quality sauce without alcohol at all, by just deglazing with a good quality bone broth instead.

We need to bring it back

Butter > margarine. No emulsifiers. No blends. No seed oils. Raw butter is a health food.

What’s your favorite fruit?

This tier list is based purely on taste :)

But remember, nuts can absolutely be part of a healthy diet. They just need to be prepared the right way, as we’ve done for so long.

Food is Love

Normalize gifts of extreme nutrient density. Food is love; food is nourishment.

Pray for North Carolina ❤️

WINSTON SOULED IDEAS

Support recovery in Western NC

❋ THE ART OF BAKING WITH HERBS AND FLOWERS

I absolutely love seeing this trend of edible flowers coming back into the kitchen. It makes everything look so much better, and I can only imagine it would encourage more people to start creating beautiful things for themselves in the kitchen.

These are some great tips from the article to using herbs and flowers if you’re new to all this":

Must Love Herbs’ Top Tips

• Don’t be afraid to experiment with what you have. As long as you know it is edible, use it!

• Don’t eat flowers if you aren’t certain they are edible. There are many free resources online as well as in-depth books you can purchase that will help you with this.

• Oil is often your best friend when it comes to preserving color and integrity while baking. I mist oil liberally over the herbs and flowers before baking. This keeps them from drying out or moving during baking.

• Harvesting herbs and flowers in the morning will ensure that they are packed full of flavor as well as moisture content. This is key in having wilt-free specimens.

• Don’t put yourself in a box thinking you can’t use flowers with vegetables or herbs. Experiment with combinations that aren’t tried and true—such as rosemary and nettle, hollyhocks and basil, or pansies and chives. Nature has an amazing way of coordinating even when you think it won’t.

❋ THE WELLNESS CONSPIRACY

The health and wellness space is ripe with noise. It seems like every week a new trend or product surfaces, a new life-changing diet. But at its core health and wellness is not a trend at all. It is so easy to get caught up in the endless loop of consumption, trying to keep up with the trends instead of coming back to the fundamentals.

Your body knows you better than any brand, any company, any influencer. Intuition is a powerful thing, yet we are more disconnected from it than ever. There is so much noise, so much distraction pulling us away from it. Intuition, if you tune in and listen closely, has the answers and will tell you what you need to thrive.

People live abundant and fulfilled lives by focusing on the basics — eating nourishing food, prioritizing movement, daily nature sunlight & grounding, building meaningful relationships, laughing, learning, being creative and doing things out of love and passion. Truly LIVING. Everything else is just fluff without these core pillars in place.

The Wellness Conspiracy

❋ PISTACHIO AND SPINACH ANOLINI

We can’t go a week without talking about pistachios, huh? This pistachio and spinach ravioli is hearty, especially for this time of year

This week we’ve got a quick little filled pasta for you. With a simple egg dough and a spreadable roasted pistachio filling, you can stamp these little anolini out in less time than it takes your caffettiera to boil.

A pasta like this can be paired with just about anything, but we dropped them into some bone broth stock that we had hanging around in the freezer, for a meal of subtle but complex flavour. Jump back a few months to find our bone broth recipe here!

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Hope you had a beautiful weekend,
Godspeed!