New York strip steak is topped with a simple sauce of cream, brandy and Dijon mustard. Recipe below.
[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]e loved our Thanksgiving turkey. We loved sitting down to dinner with family, sharing the roast turkey, the sides, the three(!) desserts. We loved the leftover turkey—on plates with also leftover sides; in sandwiches; random bites nabbed from the container and eaten cold; reheated in an impromptu sauce with aromatics and served over rice. Then suddenly, we didn’t love the turkey. It was time for steak.
There’s just something about a steak that pushes so many animal instinct buttons for me. Simply cooked, it delivers an unsubtle, unnuanced, serious, satisfying meatiness no other animal protein can touch. This recipe uses New York strip steak, a particularly flavorful cut. It also uses my current favorite method for cooking steak—pan searing it, then finishing it in the oven. Oven finishing surrounds the steak with an even, gentle heat to cook it through without overly cooking the outsides.
And because I was still in Thanksgiving mode, wanting a little extra going on, I made a simple mustard sauce. It added a tangy richness to the steak. The recipe shows ways to make it a little less simple, if you like.
Steak with Mustard Sauce
Serves 2
1 boneless New York strip steak, 8 – 12 ounces, an inch or more thick
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon dried tarragon, optional (see Kitchen Notes)
1/4 cup brandy (nothing fancy—we use E&J)
1/2 cup heavy cream, plus more as needed (see Kitchen Notes)
2 teaspoons (or a little more) Dijon mustard
Prepare the steak. Let it sit out on the counter for about 1/2 hour to come to room temperature. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Season steak generously with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil an oven-safe skillet over medium-high flame, letting it get good and hot. Add the steak to the pan and sear it on one side until nicely browned, with a little charring, about 4 minutes. Turn the steak and transfer the pan to the oven. Cook until steak is medium-rare (130 – 135ºF inside—use a meat thermometer), about 6 to 8 minutes. Or cook to the degree of doneness you prefer—just don’t tell us. Transfer steak to a warmed plate and tent with foil.
Prepare the mustard sauce. Note: you are dealing with a hot pan straight out of the oven—use an oven mitt. Wipe the pan lightly with a paper towel, but don’t overdo it. Set it over a medium flame and melt the butter, swirling it. Add the tarragon, if using, and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Remove the pan from the flame and add the brandy—it may spatter. Return pan to flame and cook for 1 or 2 minutes, scraping up any browned bits, until slightly thickened. Add 1/2 cup cream to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until it thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon. Play this by ear, knowing it will thicken more as it cools when served. Whisk in the mustard until it is completely combined. Taste the sauce. If it’s overly mustardy, whisk in more cream, a tablespoon at a time (I added 2 tablespoons). Remove from heat.
Serve. You can spoon the mustard sauce over the whole steak, as I did above, and cut it into two pieces to serve. You can also slice the steak, plate slices and spoon the mustard sauce over the individual servings.
Kitchen Notes
Say yes to tarragon. If you look, not even closely, at the photo above, you will note there is no tarragon in the sauce. In trying to simplify this sauce, I overdid it. Next time, I will add the tarragon. If you’re feeling especially fancy, you could also finely chop some shallot and add it to the butter when you do the tarragon.
Say no to half & half. Most times when a recipe calls for cream, I go with half & half to not be overly indulgent. Use cream here, or the sauce could separate.
I usually always use cream rather than half & half simply because it tastes better, and I often eat a bit less (because the sauce is so rich). But this is one of those things I go back and forth on — cream is awfully indulgent, as you say. Anyway, steak is wonderful, isn’t it? And this is a great way to add even more oomph to the dish. Thanks.
It turned out that there was no brandy in the liquor cabinet, but there was plenty of tequila… delicious!
(I wasn’t too worried about making that substitution, since I’d just seen John/Mr. Kitchen Riffs’ recipe for a Frost Bite cocktail, which is a tequila-based cousin of the brandy alexander.)