How To Make Peppercorn Sauce _ Cookery School _ Waitrose

I think peppercorn sauce is an absolute classic sauce .

Not much .

Beats it .

Really .

Hi .

I'm Becca , one of the chef cheaters here at the Waitrose Cookery School .

Today , I'm gonna be taking you through exactly how to make the perfect peppercorn sauce .

Peppercorn sauce is my number one choice of sauce to have with steak and chips .

It's really creamy .

And it's got those lovely peppercorns in there giving it absolutely heaps of flavour .

So I've got my pan on a medium heat and I'm gonna add in my shallots and also a little splash of sunflower oil along with my shallots in the pan .

I'm gonna add a pinch of salt .

They give off a really nice sweet flavour into the base of the sauce .

So it is a really important step .

Just cook them for five minutes .

I'm gonna use my micro plain to grate the garlic straight into the pan with the shallots so you don't want to add your garlic in too early because it burns really , really easily .

If you're making a sauce where you're reducing part of it down , you really want to be careful with your garlic and your shallots because basically you're just gonna be intensifying those flavours as you reduce the sauce down , so try to add your garlic in near the end , and then when you add the other ingredients , that will help to stop the garlic cooking any further .

So we've got a tablespoon of black peppercorns going straight into the pan .

You could use green peppercorns here as well .

That's absolutely fine .

And then , once you've added your peppercorns in , we're gonna add in our brandy , so we're gonna be using two tablespoons , so we're cooking the brandy off for a moment or two .

We want to keep all of that flavour in there , but we're just taking off some of the water .

If you don't want to put any alcohol in your peppercorn sauce , that's absolutely fine .

Just leave that out as soon as it's looking a little bit thicker in the bottom of the pan .

Then we're ready to go in with our stock , so I've got 500 mils of fresh beef stock .

If you use a stock cube , it's got quite a lot of salt in it already , and then as you reduce your sauce down , you're fine .

They'll end up really , really salty .

It's always best to use a homemade or a fresh stock .

If you are gonna use stock , that's absolutely fine .

It's not the traditional way to make this sauce .

The link to the full recipe is in the description .

You've added quite a lot of cold ingredients into the pan 500 mils of stock , so you might need to just turn your pan up in order to get this boiling and reduce it down and you want it to go sort of much thicker consistency .

Once you've made your sauce , you can pop it in a plastic container and get it into the fridge and keep it there .

For about three days .

We've got 100 mils of whipping cream going straight into the pan .

I'm also gonna add in two teaspoons of Dijon mustard .

This is gonna add loads of flavour into our sauce and then mix those ingredients all together .

You can see straight away that it's that classic colour of peppercorn sauce .

It's looking good , and it's starting to smell really good , too .

You're gonna want to leave this to reduce for about 20 minutes , but you wanna do this just at a simmer , not at a boil , the sauce has thickened up .

Now , as I'm running my spatula through the base of the pan , the sauce is splitting and then coming back together quite slowly , and I can see the base of the pan as I do that .

And that's how you sort of tell this at the right thickness .

So because we reduced the sauce down so much , it's really intensified the flavours there .

So I don't think it needs any more salt for me .

But always worth checking and adding any more if you want to .

So I've got my steak and chips here .

We've also got some videos on how to make the perfect steak and triple cooked chips .

Those videos are in the top right hand corner and are in the description below .

So there it is .

Peppercorn sauce , absolutely perfect sauce .

I think it's a real classic and definitely give it a go .

It's pretty easy .

Make it in advance and then you can reheat it when you're ready to eat your steak and chips and enjoy