How to Cook Steak au Poivre

Like many treasured French dishes, steak au poivre abides by certain tenets: It begins with a piece of beef that is crusted in crushed peppercorns and ends with a glossy, peppery pan sauce. But otherwise, it’s shaped by the choices of its cook.

Depending on where you dine out, you might envision steak au poivre as a cozy bistro meal or a steakhouse splurge — but it’s also the kind of restaurant dish that you can achieve at home (for a fraction of the price). Whether you’re cooking to impress a Valentine or to treat yourself, this thoughtful recipe will ensure a perfect, stress-free dinner.

Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot.

Choose the right cut of meat.

Selecting a richly marbled cut of beef is its own insurance against subpar steak — it’s more forgiving if it’s slightly overcooked. Lean filet mignon was once favored for its tenderness, but a boneless rib-eye or strip steak, marbled with fat, has infinitely more flavor, and a higher surface area to hold more toasted peppercorns. Cooking one large rib-eye to share looks more lavish on the plate — and it’s easier to cook one steak perfectly than two.

It’s hard to say whether a fattier cut of beef even strays from tradition — Anthony Bourdain favored a pavé, while Jacques Pépin suggests a shell steak. Even the origins of the dish are unclear. “Since it’s a flashy dish, with Cognac flambé, it feels more Parisian than Norman to me and more 1920s Paris to be specific,” said Maryann Tebben, the author of “Savoir-Faire: A History of Food in France.” “But this may be one of those dishes that is very hard to pin down, since pepper sauces have been popular in French cooking since the Middle Ages.”

Crack whole peppercorns evenly.

Crushing peppercorns is a tedious task; there’s simply no way around it. But, as the central flavor of steak au poivre (which translates to pepper steak), it deserves care. A mortar and pestle do a solid job of containing the pesky errant pieces — peppercorns pop like popcorn when crushed — but pulverize them unevenly. For uniformly cracked pieces, place the peppercorns in a large rimmed sheet pan and crush small clusters with the flat side of a chef’s knife. Black peppercorns are traditional, though you could certainly swap in a portion of white, green or pink peppercorns, or even whole Sichuan pepper. All varieties must be freshly crushed, as store-bought cracked pepper tastes dull and dusty by comparison.

Perfect the pan sauce.

After the peppercorn-crusted steak is seared, a simple pan sauce is created by softening shallots in the pan’s fat, then adding a splash of alcohol for verve. (Cognac is preferred, but brandy tastes just as good.) Julia Child famously feared flambé, but you can bypass any potential flames by simply deglazing the pan off the heat, allowing the Cognac to dislodge any browned bits with the burner off.

The difference between a loose sauce that runs on the plate and one that glazes your meat is strictly time: Add some stock and allow it to reduce until the sauce becomes nappante, or thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. A spoonful of butter adds a silkiness that balances the pepper’s bite, and heavy cream binds it into a satiny sauce so that doesn’t break or separate.

Lastly, plating matters: Fanning your sliced steak on top of the sauce feels more modern — and looks more refined — than dousing the meat in sauce.

The technique for steak au poivre is relatively simple, the results elegant. With the right cut of meat, and some modest tweaks, the classic dish feels timeless.