Whisky Cream Gravy for Steak

A Highland style whisky sauce, the kind that used to come with steak in hotel dining rooms. A blended Scotch is right for this, not a heavily peated malt, unless you want your sauce tasting of a bonfire. The teaspoon of marmalade is not a mistake, it balances the whisky and makes the whole thing taste finished.

Ingredients

Makes about 300ml, enough for four steaks

• 25g (1oz) butter
• 2 shallots finely chopped
• 2 tsp black peppercorns roughly crushed, about 6g
• 60ml (2fl oz) blended Scotch whisky avoid heavily peated malts
• 250ml (9fl oz) beef stock
• 1 tsp coarse cut marmalade or redcurrant jelly
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 150ml (5fl oz) double cream
• salt to taste, at the end

Kit

• Heavy frying pan
• Wooden spoon
• Pestle and mortar or a heavy pan base

Method

1. Crush the peppercorns coarsely, in a mortar or under the base of a heavy pan. You want cracked pieces about the size of a grain of rice, not powder.

2. Melt the butter in the frying pan over a medium heat, add the shallots and cook for four minutes until soft and just beginning to turn gold at the edges. Stir in the crushed pepper and cook for a further minute.

3. Take the pan off the heat before adding the whisky. This matters, both for safety and because pouring spirit into a pan on a live flame is how kitchens catch fire. Add the whisky, return the pan to the heat and let it bubble hard.

4. Reduce the whisky until the pan is nearly dry, about two minutes. It will smell fiercely alcoholic at first and then sweeter and rounder as the alcohol goes. Wait for that change before moving on.

5. Add the beef stock, marmalade and Worcestershire sauce and simmer briskly for six to eight minutes, until it has reduced by about half and looks syrupy on the spoon.

6. Turn the heat down as low as it will go and pour in the double cream. Hold it at a bare simmer for three minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickens and turns the colour of milky coffee.

7. Taste for salt and serve at once over rested steak, with any juices from the resting plate stirred in.

Tips worth knowing

• Use a mild blended whisky. Peat smoke concentrates as the sauce reduces and a heavily smoky malt will bully everything else off the plate.
• The reduction has to be complete before the cream goes in. Unreduced spirit is both alcoholic and acidic, and dropping cream into it is the classic way to end up with a split, watery sauce.
• There is no need to flambe. Burning off the alcohol with a lit match looks impressive and achieves nothing that two minutes of hard bubbling will not, at rather less risk to your eyebrows.
• Make the sauce in the steak pan while the meat rests. Steaks want five to eight minutes of resting, which is exactly the time this needs after the shallots are done.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps three days in the fridge in a sealed tub. Reheat gently, never boiling, with a splash of stock to loosen it. It does not freeze well, as the cream goes grainy and the whisky flavour dulls.

Questions people ask