15 February 2015

Hamburger steak au poivre

When I lived in Paris all those years ago, in a small 5th floor walk-up just off the rue Montorgueil, square in the center of Paris, I used to cook for a group of Parisian friends on weekends. One of the things we all enjoyed eating was French steak au poivre — steak with a black pepper and cream sauce — with sauteed potatoes and a green salad.

Because my budget wasn't really regal, I often made the steaks with ground beef. It was more tender than real steak selling at the same price, and the butcher would grind the meat when you ordered it, so you could see what cuts of beef he was using. It was always very lean.

Walt and I decided to make that the other day. We had some very thinly sliced, lean pieces of what they call rumsteak (rump steak) in France. They were too thin for making steak au poivre, which calls for thick cuts of beef cooked medium rare or even very rare. We decided to run two of the steaks through the meat grinder attachment on our stand mixer and shape the meat into thick patties.

First you coat the raw steaks with a good amount of cracked black pepper and let them rest for an hour or more to absorb the flavor. Then you sear them on high heat in a frying pan, and you take them out and let them rest while you make the sauce. Deglaze the pan with a little bit of cognac or white wine, put in a spoonful of Dijon mustard, and then add a few tablespoons of cream and stir it all together. Taste for salt. You can make as much or as little sauce as you want.

Walt made potato chips to go with our hamburger steaks. He cooked them in two batches in the deep fryer, and we put them in a warming oven while we seared the steaks and  made the sauce au poivre. We were surprised to see that the chips continued browning in the oven. They were browner than we expected but they were very good.

12 comments:

  1. That creamy mustard sauce looks so good!

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    1. The mustard is really a background flavor. The main flavor is black pepper, and the armagnac or cognac gives another nice back flavor to the cream sauce.

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  2. What about a piece of lettuce?

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    1. What about it? I always make a big green salad to have as a separate course after eating the meat and potatoes. Greenery with every meal...

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  3. Yum. Steak au poivre and steak au roquefort are dishes I often indulge in at a restaurant, but never try at home. I should try this to dress up the occasional steak haché we eat for Saturday lunch...

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  4. A little sauce or mustard with the steak or steak haché is always good, I think. But don't forget the salad!

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  5. Those potato chips look excellent. Well, the whole meal does.

    I think that browner is often better in cooking, if you don't go too far to the dark side.

    Did "steack" used to be a common spelling on menus in France? We used to see "rumsteack" a lot, but that was many years ago. Many many. Many many many.

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    1. Yes, I remember seeing the spelling steack a lot 30 or 40 years ago. Also bifteck for beefsteak. Nowadays, it seems to be mostly steak and sometimes bifteck. There was also romsteack and there were other variant spellings as well. The very brown chips were good -- they weren't burned. I think we'll need to lower the temperature of the warming oven next time though.

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  6. That steak looks pretty good! Reminds me of swiss steak from my youth, although the sauce would not have been as elegant as your sounds. Since this morning it -9 degrees F here (windchill -30) hardy food is looking and sounding very good! Yesterday I was on the hunt for cheese curds to make Poutine. Couldn't find them though. I kept thinking back to your post about Belgian Frites as I was imagining how I might prepare the fries for the Poutine.

    Stay warm

    -craig-

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    1. It's not cold over here right now, but it's rainy.

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  7. Replies
    1. Steak au poivre is a longtime classic, and it's good with thick, tender steak or with lean steak haché. One of my old French cookbooks says the recipe dates back to 1919 and was invented by the chef at Chez Maxim's in Paris.

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