[relaxing music]
Hi, I am Daniel Boulud from Restaurant Daniel
in New York City,
and I’m making my favorite steak au poivre.
Restaurant Daniel has always been the restaurant I dream of.
We’re gonna to be making today a cote de boeuf au poivre.
Au poivre mean with pepper.
And we do a steak au poivre sauce,
where we have shallots and herbs,
butter and flambe with cognac.
So, here, we are starting.
Cote de boeuf mean bone in double steak rib eye.
So, this is a 34-ounce steak.
The good thing with the bone is,
is gonna help keep part of the steak a little bit more rare.
And anything you cook on the bone is always better.
We put a string to hold the meat tight together.
Sometime with the cap, you could lose the cap here.
So, what define a good steak
is often the blend of fat and lean.
It’s okay if you have nugget of fat in the middle,
that’s gonna nourish the meat while it’s cooking,
and you can always remove it when you serve it.
The first thing you have to do
when you cook a thick steak like this
is to let it temper a little bit.
So, you leave it outside maybe for 20 minute.
Now if you like your steak very rare, then don’t temper it,
but you don’t want to eat it cold either.
So that’s why you want to be able to cook it rare
and have it warm inside.
So, the first thing we do is the seasoning.
You salt the outside.
This is sea salt.
We’re using a pepper blend
that is made of six pepper inside.
And the six pepper are from different continent.
There is some green, there is some black.
Sometime, we have some pink pepper.
You can use totally only black pepper.
I like the fact that many peppers have different fragrance.
You can also preseason your steak, but not too long ahead.
I mean, in a restaurant, you cannot preseason the steak.
You get the order, you season the steak,
you cook it, and it’s all fine.
So, you know, there’s so many theory about steak.
What I’m gonna do is my theory,
so good luck.
I wanted to cook my cote de boeuf in my pan,
the Daniel Boulud kitchen pan.
But if you have a cast iron pan,
if you have a copper pan at home,
as long as you can maintain a consistent heat.
I have a little bit of a beef fat
that is rendered from the trimming of the cote de boeuf.
The beef fat has been cooked
and also cook with a little bit of garlic, thyme.
So I use a little bit of beef fat in the pan
and a little bit of clarified butter.
The beef fat can take higher temperature
and it is good to cook in its own fat.
But it don’t matter if it’s a pork chop,
if it’s a beef chop, or if it’s a veal chop,
you should always keep the trimming and cook with it.
I would say medium, medium high.
As long as you see the fat bubbling and rippling
and making music, that’s a good sign.
There’s gonna be a little bit of smoke,
but you don’t want too much.
You lower, you raise,
you make sure that you don’t burn your steak,
but you sear it well.
When you cook a steak, when you use a fork,
you don’t go in the middle and poke your steak,
you always go on the side in a part of the steak
that is not the prime meat, but right there for example.
And you can turn it like this.
And I’m from Leon, I love garlic,
so I like to put some garlic inside my steak too.
So this is only gonna flavor the fat sometime.
This is just to flavor, and if you feel that it’s burning,
you take it out.
We’re gonna give many sear from one side to the other.
I’m trying to do a constant turning.
I won’t cook it for five minutes on one side,
five minutes on the other.
I’d rather go gradually, gently inside.
Even out the temperature and make sure that both side
of the steak have the same gradual cooking inside.
And you don’t want to create a crust
that is too well done on the outside
and it’s too uneven between one side and the other.
You want the perfect steak.
And also, you know, cooking a cote de boeuf at home,
if you put too much heat, it’ll be very smoky.
So, you really have to be gentle with the steak
and be patient with the steak.
And that’s why the way I’m cooking here,
it take patient rather than speed.
You see, the music never stop.
And that’s what you want,
is you don’t want smoke, you just want music.
You can feel it by touching how the meat
is still very rare on the inside, yeah.
I think we have been doing it now for almost 10 minutes,
but that’s good.
That’s how you want to do it at home.
You want to be gentle,
not create too much splattering also with the fat,
because that will take you two days to clean the kitchen.
We have a broiler at the steakhouse
that goes up to, like, 1200 degrees or something,
but no one has this type of broiler at home.
So here, I’m giving you the home version
of how to cook you thick steak at home.
And if there is any other chef that do it differently
and smartly, follow him too.
Now steak is medium rare, so a little rest, nicely.
You want the temperature to get gently into it.
So, the outside is very hot, the inside’s still cold,
so, now, it’s gonna be warm by the time
I finish my potatoes paillasson here.
[relaxing music]
With my steak, I like potato, I like vegetable.
Here, we’re gonna have this pommes darphin.
I think it’s perfect because it goes well with the sauce.
It’s tasty, something classic French.
So, I have potato, I have celery roots, carrots,
and my favorite root vegetable, a truffle to go with it.
So, as you see,
I am turning this into a small, medium julienne,
almost like matchsticks.
You have to be very careful with this tool.
It’s not recommended to use it if you never use it before.
You can use a food processor, that will do the same job.
But we like it the old-fashioned way here.
I have celery roots, the root vegetable inside.
You can do any kind of vegetable as long as the vegetable
will marry well with the potatoes.
So, this get nicely mixed.
If you don’t have truffle, it’s okay.
I just wanted to show you that during the truffle season,
that’s what I like to do,
to put a little bit of truffle inside.
If you don’t have truffle,
you can put mushroom in it.
Truffle is very particular,
because it’s basically a mushroom and testosterone.
You put a little bit inside and it’ll give a lot.
So, here I have a little bit of clarified butter.
I’d rather want to use clarified butter
than fresh butter at the start.
So, again, it’s all about keeping the temperature very high,
but you can use oil as well.
And this is a simple dish
and you can do it with only potatoes
and maybe a little bit of onion.
What I like also inside this sometime
it’s a little bit of shallots.
Just potatoes, it’s delicious.
That’s the original, just potatoes.
And after you put it in a pan,
you start to really compress the top.
You compress the side so it become even.
And you push on the edge to keep it all together.
And the vegetable’s gonna start to cook gently.
So, of course, if you do it just with carrots or celery,
it is gonna be hard to stay together,
but with the starch of the potatoes,
hopefully it will stay together.
And then what I like is to put a little bit
of butter like this.
I’m moving lightly like this
just to even out the cooking underneath
and make sure that it’s coming out nicely.
So you have to make sure that you keep
that very much together.
And the steam, while cooking,
the steam will start to cook the center and the top.
You don’t want smoke, you don’t want too much heat,
but you want to make sure that you are always listening
to the potatoes frying gently underneath there.
So I don’t want to add too much fat,
but in order to cook it nicely underneath,
I’m putting a little bit of butter here
before I flip it on this part.
Are you ready? Because there’s only one flip, huh?
And if I mess up, don’t blame me, okay?
Voila.
You see the browning, it has been gentle.
It was done with clarified butter and fresh butter.
It’s very crusty, but it’s very moist below.
And by having browned the potato perfect,
already half of it is cooked.
Now, I just need to cook the other half the same way,
and we’re gonna be perfect.
So I’m gonna let that finish gently here to cook.
Now, we’re gonna finish the steak and the au poivre sauce.
[relaxing music]
What’s important of course
is to use the pan you cook the steak with,
but you can remove the garlic, the shallots, the thyme.
I had a bay leaf.
And basically what I want is,
all the pepper that fell off the beef,
what’s left in the pan.
It’s a beautiful beef fat with a little bit of butter.
What’s important in the pan is what we call the sucs,
which is the juices of the beef,
the element of the bottom of the pan here.
That’s gonna go away when we make the sauce.
That’s gonna give wonderful flavors.
I’m gonna give a quick sear to the beef one more time here,
just to warm it up.
It rested.
And I’m putting the juice that was in the pan here.
I’m just giving it a quick warmup in the pan.
And so, now, some butter inside.
Don’t forget that in the fat I left of the beef,
there’s a lot of flavor with the thyme, the herb,
the garlic, the shallots already.
But I’m adding extra shallots to finish the sauce now.
I am putting with the shallots also a teaspoon of pepper
that gonna fortify my sauce au poivre.
So, teaspoon will make that much.
I don’t recommend to play with this at home,
but if you don’t have cognac,
you can put bourbon of course,
that will be delicious.
I have a French cognac here,
because that’s how I make my sauce au poivre.
So you don’t want the shallots to burn, but to color.
And of course, if you want to make your steak happy,
you just give him a little bit of cognac flavor on it
before you finish the sauce like this.
Voila.
And what I like is when we do a flambe,
voila, is to also give some flambe to the steak as well.
We want to burn the alcohol,
but we want to keep the flavor of the cognac.
By nature of the cognac, the alcohol will burn for sure.
So, I am putting a little bit of beef stock here,
which is a sauce we have as a base here at the restaurant.
If you don’t have beef stock at home to make you sauce,
if you have your trimming in the pan and all that,
it’ll be delicious as well.
You can find also demi-glace,
which is made with mostly beef
in a freezer of a grocery store.
you can find that.
So, I’m reducing that very well,
almost to a what we call glace de viande.
Not demi-glace, but glace de viande,
which is basically a beef stock reduced to the max.
And then I put cream inside.
I like my steak au poivre a little creamy.
You can have it without cream if you like.
So, I wouldn’t cook it any longer than that.
And then what I like to do
that is absolutely not conventional,
but I don’t care,
is to put a little bit of mustard inside.
So, that’s the little je ne sais quoi
that give a little more extra kicks.
And so, if you want your sauce to be a little cleaner,
you can strain it as well.
And if you feel then the sauce is a little too shiny
and maybe you overcook it a little bit,
then the simple thing is to add a little bit of water in it.
That’s just nothing wrong cooking with water.
Very good.
It has a nice, roasted flavor, it’s peppery.
That mustard give a little bit sort of condiment to it.
The shallots, the cognac, all that composed together,
make it for rich and spicy and creamy
and delicious sauce for the cote de boeuf.
So, there’s different way to cut the cote de boeuf.
In the steak, there is the bone,
there is the things around the bone
that you want to keep, it’s delicious.
Because he was well trimmed and perfect.
And then you have the eyes here
and then you have the rib eye cap.
What I like is that everybody can have a little bit
of the eyes and the rib eye cap.
So, first, I will cut the bone,
I will leave a little bit of meat on the bone,
because there’s always someone that love to eat the bone.
So, I like to detach the eye and keep the rib eye cap.
I like the meat rare in the middle, medium rare around,
and well sear on the outside,
but not well done on the outside, just well sear.
What’s important is that you want that crust to be thin.
And that’s why we gently roasted on both side
to really get that beautiful gentle crust.
So, we cut that all the way down.
If you don’t want to cut it,
then you can serve yourself a big slab.
It’s okay too.
And then the rib eye cap,
I like to make sure I cut it in a way that you can enjoy,
because it’s a little bit more fatty on the outside.
And so, you can enjoy the whole roasted side of it.
And it’s a delicacy, that part as well.
It has a different texture than the heart of the steak.
Voila.
With my steak, I like to have watercress.
Why watercress?
Because watercress is peppery,
watercress is spicy,
and it goes perfect with a steak like that.
And of course, the sauce here.
And to finish, I have my flavored beef fat here
that I’m gonna drizzle a little bit over the steak.
So, this step here is just to bring back
a little bit of a beefy, flavorful fat on it
and to shine a little bit the steak with that.
And then we finish with the fleur de sel.
Tiny little snowflakes on top of salt.
Voila.
Cote de boeuf au poivre, paillasson de racine,
sauce au poivre, bone in rib eye steak au poivre
with a root truffle potato pie
That is my Sunday’s lunch at home.
Well, it’s not every day that we do home cooking at Daniel,
but my home is right above the kitchen here.
You know, the French, we love our sauce.
The sauce can be 50% of the steak.
That’s how I like it.
Mm.
The meat and the sauce together is perfect, tender, tasty.
And as you see the crust here on the sear,
that’s where also extra flavor is.
The sign of a good steak is when there is a good crust.
Peppery, delicious.
So French.
When I taste this, it bring me back to my youth.
And it’s like when I had my first steak au poivre in France.
That’s the beauty of food, is to take you back places.
I think, don’t be scared,
just don’t set the house on fire when you do the flambe.
And if you’re really scared to make a steak, then call me.
I’ll come in your home and make it for you.
[relaxing music]
I just came back from LA to do a Chefs for LA’s charity
with the chef in LA there for people in the industry
that was hurt by the fires.
I like them, they gave me a French knife,
a real French knife.
This is not a steak knife,
this is not normally what you cut a steak with,
but I felt, you know, I’ll honor them, honor the steak.
And it was a wonderful fundraising.
So, if anyone watch me cutting a steak
with this, forgive me.
I was just trying to be sending a kiss to my friend in LA.