Peppercorn Sauce Recipe

What’s better than a tasty peppercorn sauce on a steaming steak? Let’s see why humanity can’t find peace since they first asked it!

It’s fascinating how people can demand their right to something that they didn’t even know existed even a couple of minutes ago. Even worse happens when we get used to something.

Is peppercorn worth fighting for?

During the history of humanity, people always found blatantly stupid reasons to go to war. Love or faith is the most likely contenders for the top spots, followed closely by our need to fuel our addictions.

Well, getting the control of people’s addiction always means getting hold of their purse so in reality that’s getting into the territory of money and power. Fighting over money or power taps into the core of our survival instincts so it shouldn’t be categorized so useless as long as it threatens one livelihood.

How peppercorn changed the face of the world?

Still, people lived and could live without things like tobacco, sugar, or spices, yet they rather choose not to or even worse, fight for it. It’s not really surprising though if we dive deeper into how various addictions are shaping our thoughts from the inside without us realizing it.

Just try quitting sugar for a month and see how every thought of ours will start to revolve about how to get something with just a tiny sugar in it. No wonder the whole world has changed once people figured out how to make it cheaply.

Not like humanity has stopped changing the face of the world ever since. Meat that once was a rarity and reserved only for a very few or rare occasions, is even fed to our pets now. Who cares about never seen spices in the disappearing rain-forests when we can have cheap steak on our table with a side of peppercorn sauce?

What was first, peppercorn sauce or steak?

Maybe they were sent to light of the kitchen, hand by hand glorifying the greatness of the creator by singing hallelujah until served at table 7 where gluttony had his table reserved.

Peppercorn sauce origin has been lost on the pages of great recipe books and only lives in our collective memory as something that goes with steak beside mushroom sauce. Although crushed peppercorn was used for centuries -to rub the steak in, to give it a pungent characteristic, yet complementary flavor once seared- making sauce from it must be a very new phenomenon given that no centuries old cookbooks mention it.

It’s not surprising as cream or milk -that is used as a main base for the sauce- weren’t always abundantly available for anyone to experiment with it unlike black pepper that was available so long that even Ramses II from Egypt had some into his nostrils stuffed. Don’t ask why people from distant history did strange things.

What peppercorn was used for?

Although black pepper was known for long, it wasn’t widely available or at least not for those on the budget. Black pepper native to India was imported through Italy to Europe was a highly expensive spice that it could even have been used as a currency. The king of the Visigoth Alaric went so far as to ask part of the ransom for besieged Rome in 3000 pounds black pepper.

Not just nobles and kings liked their food spiced up though. Once more black pepper started to trickle into Europe through various newly discovered trade routes, its price came down, so it became accessible for the middle-class too.

Nowadays black pepper come to be so cheap that McDonald’s gives bags of them out for free. Not bad from a spice the people waged wars for.

Ingredients

Beginner

⅓ cup / 100ml Wine or brandy
2 – 4 teaspoons Black pepper to taste (crushed)
1 teaspoon Salt
½ cup / 125ml Milk
½ cup / 125ml Cream

Advanced

Peppercorn base

⅓ cup / 100ml Wine or brandy
2 – 4 teaspoons Black pepper to taste (crushed)
1 teaspoon Salt

Bechamel sauce

2 tablespoons / 30g Butter
¼ cup / 30g Flour
1 cup / 240ml Milk

Overkill

Peppercorn base

2 tablespoons / 30g Butter
2 shallots or ½ Red onion (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon Salt
2 cloves Garlic
2 – 4 teaspoons Black pepper to taste (crushed)
⅓ cup / 100ml Wine or brandy
1 Bay leaf
2 sprigs Thyme
1 cup / 250ml Bechamel sauce or cream

How to make peppercorn sauce

Beginner

In a saucepan bring red wine or brandy to boil then add the crushed peppercorn and salt.
Reduce the liquid on low heat until it thickens. It takes about 1 – 3 minutes.
Stir in the milk and the cream.
Bring it to boil and simmer away a bit of liquid if a thicker sauce is needed or replace part of the milk with cream.

Enjoy!

Advanced

Peppercorn sauce

Add red wine or brandy with crushed peppercorn and salt into a saucepan then reduce the liquid to get a thick sauce.

Bechamel sauce

Melt butter in a saucepan on medium heat then gradually incorporate the flour.
Once all the flour is added we get clumps of buttery flour.
Start incorporating the milk slowly while stirring continuously. Heating up the milk beforehand may speed up the process.
Continue stirring it until we get the desired thickness. Take it off heat and stir until all the lumps are broken up and we have a nice smooth bechamel sauce.

Assembly

Mix bechamel into the peppercorn sauce.

Overkill

Melt butter in a saucepan and saute onion with salt on medium heat until it gets a glassy / translucent look for about 1 -3 minutes.
Mix in garlic and black pepper then saute until garlic gets fragrant for about 1 – 2 minutes.
Pour in red wine or brandy then add bay leaf and thyme.
Reduce the liquid to at least half for about 2 -4 minutes.
Mix in bechamel sauce or cream.