- *sigh* What's lame, Archer? The fact that we're up against at least four highly trained
North Korean agents?
Or the fact that they all have got—
- Peppercorns, Lana.
- Well, I was gonna say Tokarevs and Shpagin-41 submachine guns, but yeah, let's go with peppercorns.
- Thank you! Because without peppercorns, it's not steak au poivre.
It can't be. By like, definition.
- Archer, we're supposed to be stopping the North Koreans from buying part of a nuclear bomb,
not ordering every single item on the room service menu.
- Just the dinner menu.
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish,
where this week, we're making Steak au Poivre by its own very definition requires peppercorns,
peppercorns that we're gonna smash up.
Ideally, we want to use a mortar and pestle, but if you're like me and you can't find yours, we can employ a much more
laborious technique of pouring them into a shallow frying pan and crushing them using the bottom of a small saucepan
or a meat mallet.
In the end, we want totally crushed peppercorns
that we're going to pass through a fine mesh sieve.
This is to get rid of all the smaller pepper particulate
that will burn if we apply too much heat to it.
This is perfectly good for other seasoning applications,
but we're after these big 'ol chunks.
Next up, we're going to salt and rest our steaks—I'm going with filet mignon.
We want to season both sides heavily with kosher salt
and let them sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes up to an hour.
This is going to help our steaks retain a bit more juiciness
down the line
While those rest, we need to address the sides on the plate.
I saw baby carrots and peas.
Pretty boring, but I wanna see if we can spice 'em up a little.
Let's start with the carrots
Which I'm going saute in just a whole sh*t ton of butter.
Like a solid sticks worth that I'm going to get foaming over medium heat
Make sure not to get your butter too hot
which I'm going to explain why later
Once it's all melted and nice and bubbly we're going to add our carrots
I got one pound of baby carrots here
I'm going to start by just slow cooking them in the butter for 10-15 minutes
Until they just start to get a little soft
It's very important not to let the milk fats separate
the way it does when you make brown butter because then you'll have
a watery, greasy liquid in the bottom of the pan
instead of a nice cohesive sauce
and now to make the carrots interesting I'm going to add a half cup of bourbon
which I'm going to flambe
Give that a little shake until all the fire goes away
and then I'm gonna maybe a quarter cup of orange juice
for a little acidity and flavor
and to both help sweeten and thicken the sauce I'm going to add 2 to 3 tablespoons
of brown sugar
and slowly stir and cook the carrots in this mixture until it reduces
into a syrupy, sweet glaze
When we get near the end of the cooking I'm gonna add some freshly chopped thyme
along with s few twists of freshly ground black pepper and a few sprinkles of freshly koshered kosher salt
And like I mentioned earlier I'm gonna make sure not to let the butter brown
otherwise this is gonna happen
this tastes good but what you've essentially got hear is carrots swimming in clarified butter
Which as one of my man culinary heroes would say, "Is not good eats"
So make sure you regulate your temp and slowly and g e n t l y cook your carrots until
tender, sweet, and sticky
now onto the peas which we're going to parboil
for 2-3 minutes or until just tender
and then we're going to immediately shock them in an ice bath
Bear in mind this is if you're using fresh peas
If you're using frozen peas you can skip directly to this step
after defrosting I'm going to saute the peas
in a little bit of butter and by a little bit i mean like half a stick
about ten second in I'm gonna remember that I wanted to saute a shallot
first so I'll just dump it in and hope that you guys don't notice
and then we're cooking for another 2-3 minutes until the peas are nice and tender
at which point we're adding about 2 tablespoons of freshly shopped mint
and the zest of one lemon
and just give those guys a little toss at a little bit of heat just to let those flavors get to know eachother
and then right at the end of cooking of course we're going to season with a bit of kosher salt
and freshly ground pepper
and keep these guys warm while we move on to cooking our steak
which as you can see is all nicely rested
and requires another pat down with paper towels
before being introduced to a ripping hot pan
we're just looking to make sure it's hot
we're dropping our steaks in with a little bit of vegetable oil and letting them sear on both sides
we've made steaks every which way on this show
so I'm just gonna breeze through this part
suffice to say I pan seared and then butter basted these steaks
searing about four minutes per side on medium high heat and then lowering the heat adding
some butter and basting
repeating until the desired internal temp of 130 degrees F
was achieved
we are setting those aside to rest for ten minutes and then
making the pan sauce in said pan
I wiped out all that brown butter leaving some of that fond on the bottom of the pot
and I'm adding about a tablespoon and a half of our crushed peppercorn
which I'm just gonna toast for 20-30 seconds
or so I don't wanna burn the fond and then off heat I'm adding about 1/3 a cup of Cognac
which I'm going to flame
for little to no reason there's no need to do this
once the fire has evaded
I'm going to add a few ladle fulls or about half a cups worth of beef stock
that I have previously boiled down by half
if that makes any sense
I'm also adding about a half a cup of heavy cream
and then I'm gonna keep simmering or tiny whisking this until it becomes a thick, lushes, unctuous, luxurious sauce
that easily coats the back of a spoon
and because we're not skimping on the butter this episode it's time to add some butter
two tablespoons that we're going to tiny whisk into the sauce off the heat
and then it's finally time to plate up
I've got my sliced up fillet that I'm going to flank with our lemon-mint peas and our bourbon carrots
and then I'm going to delicately sauce our fillet
and finally it's time to eat
The carrots are perfect. They're tender and sweet and rich and sticky. The peas are bright and herbaceous
al dente and also perfect and the steak au poivre is just one of the greatest things
you could possibly imagine it is a clear and obvious entrant into the—oh wait a second
I can't finish this without a little bit of Glengoolie Blue
which is not a real scotch but
I can only assume they mean Johnnie Walker Blue Label
*sigh* The things I have to do to be accurate on this show but for you guys I will bite this bullet
And it's really tasty not worth $200 a bottle but I gotta say it goes really really well with Steak au Poivre
Archer might be an awful person but the guy knows how to eat