Peppered Crusted Ribeye with Creamy Blue Cheese Sauce

Last Wednesday I shared my the first recipe, leek soup with a hint of blue cheese, from my husband's and my cook-off we did on our anniversary. Here's recipe number two and you can read the following post for recipe 3 - Oven Baked Potato Chips. This dish is easy to make and wonderful tasting.

The steak only takes about 6 minutes to cook, however before you can cook it, it needs to sit out on the counter for about an hour to come to room temperature. Have all your sides ready to go before you throw the steak into the skillet. Depending on what type of peppercorn you use and fresh ground is a must here, your steak can be very spicy. The first time I made it I used tellicherry peppercorns, which had wonderful flavor, but were not overly spicy. The second time I used black peppercorns and wow my mouth was a flaming, but they were good. The blue cheese sauce helps cut down the heat and goes perfectly with this type of steak.

I was able to get some awesome blue cheese at the co-op. It was from a local farm and was made with raw milk from grass-fed cows! If you don't have blue cheese, gorgonzola would work too.  For this meal I was able to get everything, but the sea salt, pepper and olive oil, from local sources!
What You'll Need - serves 2
For the Creamy Blue Cheese Sauce2 tbsp. organic butter
1/4 cup white onion - diced very finely
3 oz. blue cheese - crumbled (about 1/3 cup)
1/2 cup organic cream

For the Steak:
2 grass-fed ribeyes about 1" thick
Olive oil
~6 tbsp. fresh ground peppercorns
Sea salt


Getting Started:
For the Sauce:
1. Melt your butter in a small pot over medium low - medium heat. Toss in your onion and cook

until onion is very tender and soft. Do not brown the onion.  This takes about 5-10 min. depending on how finely your onion is chopped.

2. Add your blue cheese to the pot and smash it, along with the onion, with the back of a spoon until smooth. Stir in your cream and bring to a slight simmer. Allow to simmer for 10 -15 minutes or until it's reduced to your desired thickness. For me this is when is coats the back of a spoon like a really creamy soup.

3. Season with salt and pepper if you think it needs it, then set aside and keep it warm until your steak is ready.

For the Steak:
Ideally you should use a well-seasoned iron skillet to cook your steak in, but a heavy bottom stainless steel skillet would likely work as well. I have a 12" skillet and it's best to cook only one steak in a skillet that size, so either use two skillets or cook one steak at a time.  

1. Turn you oven on to 500º and place you skillet inside and allow to heat for at least a half hour or even better for an hour.

2. Coat your steaks with a thin layer of olive oil and then wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper. Let your steak come to room temperature for about an hour on the kitchen counter. You can not skip this step. If your steak is cold when you cook it, you'll be left with a cold steak to eat. It also won't cook as well.

3. Spread your fresh ground pepper on a plate. Place steaks in pepper and then flip them (putting more pepper down if necessary) to thoroughly coat the steaks.

4. Turn your stove top on high and make sure it nice and hot before the next step.

5. Pull your extremely hot frying pan out of the oven and place on hot stove. Place steak in skillet on one side and cook for about 90 seconds. (My steaks were just a about 1" thick and I'm cooking them so they'll be medium rare, if you your steaks are thicker you may want to increase the time up to 2-3 min. per side depending on how well done you like them).

6. Flip steak over to the other side of the skillet, cook for 90 seconds more. Flip back to it's original side and stick in the oven and cook it 60 seconds more on each side. Just a heads up, be prepared for a bit of smoke, the steak isn't burning, but the pan is so hot that it smokes.

7. Remove steak from the oven and wrap it in a couple pieces of aluminum foil. Allow to rest for approx. 5 minutes before slicing and serving. During this time you can make your other steak if you are doing them one at a time.

8. Serve your steak with a dish of the blue cheese sauce on the side or drizzled on the plate and some oven baked potato chips.


Enjoy!