Dutch beef steak: Restaurant-quality fillet for dinner tonight

Do you know where your pan-fried fillet steak with a perfectly grilled crust and beautifully pink meat comes from? This Dutch beef steak with mushrooms and cognac sauce is often seen as one of the forerunners. When you fry a steak in a pan, you can accurately choose your level of doneness and enjoy the most tender cut of fillet you’ve ever had. It’s the perfect home-cooked meal to enjoy on those special evenings of celebrations like anniversaries or date night.

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Dutch beef steak suggestions

If you’re going to butterfly your steak, make sure to cut against the grain and that also counts when carving the steak for a beautiful arrangement on a serving dish. This ensures that each bite is as tender as possible, especially after resting the steak which is done for as long as the steak has cooked. When reducing the sauce, you can also thicken the sauce with some corn starch mixed with cold water (about a tablespoon each). To shorten cooking time, dry-fry the mushrooms and maybe some onions before finishing in the sauce, adding the steak and then a knob of butter.

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If it’s date night or an anniversary, you should be cooking this beautiful Dutch beef steak with mushroom sauce and a glass of red wine.

Last updated on 10 March 2023

Dutch beef steak recipe

Recipe by Grant Hawthorne Course: DinnerCuisine: DutchDifficulty: Moderate

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

15

minutes

Total time

45

minutes

Aptly named “The Cattleman”, this was the forerunner of what steakhouses were to become. The legendary Dutchman’s signature dish was a “Hollandse Biefstuk” (or Dutch beef steak).
Basically it is a pan-fried beef fillet with a mushroom-brandy-butter sauce.

Ingredients

• A piece of 35-day matured beef fillet

• 200 g 200 salted butter

• 400 g 400 sliced mushrooms (choose from field, button, chestnut or to your taste)

• 400 ml 400 brown veal jus

• salt and ground white pepper

• 100 ml 100 cognac

Method

• Heat the butter in a cast iron pan, until it is smoking. Season the fillet well with salt and pepper on one side.
• Carefully place fillet in the pan and season the other side with salt and pepper. The steak is ready on that side when it lifts off of the pan, about 2-3 minutes.
• The fillet should be turned after approximately 2 minutes, allowing all sides to be evenly seared dark brown.
• A minute before ready, remove the fillet from the pan and reserve to one side under foil so that it can rest.
• Add the sliced mushrooms and sauté quickly. Flambé with the Cognac and add the veal jus. Reduce till the required consistency. Return the fillet to the sauce, and allow it to heat through very quickly.
• Arrange the fillet on a plate (you can slice and butterfly the fillet), with the mushrooms crowning the fillet and the pool of sauce lapping at the edges.
• Serve with croquette potatoes or thick cut chips.

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