Food, Home & Lifestyle
Recipe: Pepper Steak with Red Wine Sauce
Lesson time 14:56 min
While working in three-star restaurants in France, Wolfgang perfected this classic pepper steak. Learn how to flawlessly sear your steak, and discover how to transform the demi-glace you made in the previous chapter into a rich red wine pan sauce.
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Topics include: Pepper Varieties • Searing and Resting Steak • Red Wine Raisin Sauce
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In 16 lessons, learn exclusive recipes and cooking techniques from the chef behind Spago and CUT.
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Now I'm gonna show you how to make a delicious pepper steak. You know, we all love beef, but we don't just going to eat barbecue or grilled steaks all the time. When I worked in France, in some of the best restaurants, like Maxime's or like Beau Manoir, pepper steak was one of the staples. It's easy to make, once you have your demi glace or your veal stock ready. The pepper is spicy, how are we going to balance it? With a little sweetness. Now I have some raisins, and guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to plump them up. I'm going to bring them to a boil with some red wine. So this red wine going to help me to deglaze my pan. Also, it will give the wine some sweetness, and I going actually use the raisins in the sauce, too. OK. Now we said we're going to make a pepper steak. We need pepper. You know, there are all kinds of pepper; green pepper, white pepper, and the black pepper. Basically it all comes from the pepper tree. First they are green, then they get white, and then black. They all have different flavors in different stages of ripeness. Here I have this Ziploc bag because I'm going crushed the pepper instead of grinding finely, because I really want to have the bite of the pepper. So we're going to add a little green pepper. All right, a few more. You can do that in advance and then leave the rest right in the Ziploc bag. OK. And I put double the amount of black pepper. OK. So now you lock it up, be sure there is no air in it. If there is air in it, just squeeze the air out and Ziploc it. So now with the mallet or with a rolling pin, be sure to get all the air out, you can smash that up. Make sure that the pepper is really well crushed, you don't want to have whole peppercorns in here. That's still a little bit. So I love coarsely ground pepper on any kind of red meat. If I grill a steak, or if I make a pepper steak, this is always amazing. So let's look at it now. I think it looks pretty good. See that? So you have crushed peppercorns here. Now, the peppercorns are ready. Here I have a New York steak, a New York strip loin, and I'm going to cut two beautiful steaks. If you like the steak more on the well done side, don't cut it too thick. If you like in more on the rare side, we cut it a little thicker. So, let's see. I'm going to cut two beautiful steaks about that size, so. So here I have a beautiful New York You can see it's beautifully marbled, and the marbling really makes the beef stand out. Another thing that makes the beef tender is the aging. If you eat beef which is one week old, it's going to be tough, but after aging it for three, four weeks, or five weeks, it becomes really tender. OK. Now, I going to season my steaks with a salt on both sides. Always we season our meat on both sides. And I season my meat always before I cook it. And...
About the Instructor
Legend has it Wolfgang Puck came up with his famous smoked salmon pizza when his restaurant ran out of bagels—and ended up changing the way America cooks. In his MasterClass, the five-time James Beard Award-winning chef behind more than 100 restaurants brings you into his kitchen. You’ll learn not only how to master starters, mains, sides, and cocktails, but also how to take risks to create memorable recipes of your own.
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Wolfgang Puck
In 16 lessons, learn exclusive recipes and cooking techniques from the chef behind Spago and CUT.
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