50-Minute Recipe for Preparing Green Peppercorn Sauce

The other day, my wife handed me this recipe from our local newspaper and said, "Let's try this.

It was for meatballs with a green peppercorn Sauce. The meatballs looked pretty standard, and I will talk about them some other time, but I was interested in the Green Peppercorn Sauce.

The total preparation time is about 50 minutes for the meatballs and the sauce. While the sauce is reducing, you should work on the meatballs.

Now, 50 minutes is just a little more time than you want to spend on making a sauce for dinner in the middle of the week, and I agree.

We made this sauce over the weekend when we had plenty of time and didn't mind spending it on making a sauce this good. And believe me, this sauce is fantastic!!!

Putting it on meatballs was great, but I would use it on a prime cut of beef, which I did a couple of nights later.

This sauce takes so long because there is a lot of stock reduction going on. Typically, a restaurant uses an ingredient like demi glace, a brown sauce already reduced, and the base for all the classic sauces.

Making a true demi-glace at home takes a lot of bones and a lot of hours. It is well worth the time if you have it and effort if you like this sort of thing, but it is a pretty daunting task for most of us.

I prefer to use one of the good commercial products available on the market, but more on that when I tell you how I made this same sauce in 20 minutes. Let's look at how to make an incredible Green Peppercorn Sauce for meatballs, beef tenderloin, or whatever else you fancy putting it on.

Prepping the Peppercorns

To prep the green peppercorns, I removed them from the jar, drained any brine, and placed them into a Ziploc bag. I then smash them with a meat mallet I use for pounding chicken breasts or veal into scaloppini. You could also use your heavy-bottomed saucepan or even a can of soup.

How do you know when the green peppercorn sauce is reduced by half?

You could look at the sides of the pan and try to keep track. Not very easy to do. I use a wooden shish kabob skewer to place into the sauce and measure where the liquid comes from. Every once in a while, I put it in again and see when it is down by half.

I would love to hear from you if anyone has a better method.

Spicy Peppercorns and Kids

My kids love the sauce on their food, especially steak, but there is no way they would eat it with spicy peppercorns. So, I remove a little of the sauce before adding the peppercorns and keep it separate from them.

📖 Recipe

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Green Peppercorn Sauce – 50 minute version

How to make the longer version of this sauce.

Prep Time5

Cook Time40

Total Time45

Course: Sauces

Cuisine: French

Keyword: sauce

Servings: 2 cups

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium shallots
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar
½ cup decent brandy I used a Cognac because I didn't have any brandy in the house
1 cup red wine
1 cup port
2 cups homemade beef stock or a good commercial brand
½ cup heavy cream half and half if you are counting calories
2 tablespoons butter unsalted
2 tablespoons green peppercorns in brine

Instructions

Mince the shallots.
Heat your saucepan over medium-high heat, add the oil and let it get hot but not smoking. Add the shallots and cook until they are a golden brown but pay attention and keep stirring so they don't burn and you have to start all over again. Should take about 4 to 5 minutes.
Add the mustard and sherry vinegar. By the way, sherry vinegar is not that easy to find. If you can't find it in your local supermarket, you may have to look in a fancy gourmet store like William Sonoma or try finding it on the Internet.
Reduce this combination by half, which takes only about 1 minute.
Add the brandy or Cognac and cook to burn off all the alcohol. About 3 minutes.
I like to remove the pan from the flame on the stove top before adding any liquid that contains alcohol and can potentially blow up in my face. It shouldn't happen if you remove the pan, but be careful.
Add the red wine and port and reduce again by half. This takes a good 20 minutes. You want the sauce to be simmering so if starts to boil, reduce the heat to medium or medium-low.
When the sauce is reduced, remove it from the heat and add the cream, butter and crushed peppercorns. Taste and season for salt.

The Secret to Making a Quick Green Peppercorn Sauce Recipe

Demi-Glace

The big difference between this shorter version of the Green Peppercorn Sauce recipe and the longer version is that it uses demi-glace.

Demi-glace is a brown sauce reduction made from beef and veal stock that has been reduced for hours and hours down to a glaze. There are some other ingredients in a classic demi-glace, and if interested, you can read about making your own demi-glace at home here.

I have made classic demi glace a couple of times from scratch because it is essential for preparing classic sauces like those in gourmet restaurants, but it is a lot of work. Once I found all these tremendous commercial brands used in professional kitchens everywhere, I now make a lot more classic and everyday sauces when cooking beef, chicken, lamb, and even fish.

So here is a shorter version of the Green Peppercorn Sauce using the Demi Glace.

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Green Peppercorn Sauce – 20 minute version

Prep Time5

Cook Time20

Total Time25

Course: Sauces

Cuisine: French

Keyword: sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium shallots
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar
½ cup brandy I used a Cognac because I didn't have any brandy in the house
¼ cup red wine
¼ cup port
1 cup of demi glace
½ cup heavy cream half and half if you are counting calories
2 tablespoons butter unsalted
2 tablespoons green peppercorns in brine

Instructions

Mince the shallots.
Heat your saucepan over medium-high heat, add the oil, and let it get hot but not smoking.
Add the shallots and cook until golden brown, but pay attention and keep stirring so they don't burn, and you have to start all over again. It should take about 4 to 5 minutes.
Add the mustard and sherry vinegar.
Reduce this combination by half, which takes only about 1 minute.
Add the brandy or Cognac and cook to burn off all the alcohol—about 3 minutes.
I like to remove the pan from the flame on the stovetop before adding any liquid that contains alcohol and can potentially blow up in my face. It shouldn't happen if you remove the pan, but be careful.
Next, add the red wine and port and reduce again by half. This should only take 5 to 10 minutes since you are reducing much less liquid. You want the sauce to be simmering, so reduce the heat to medium or medium-low if it starts to boil.
Add the demi-glace and continue reducing until the sauce is the consistency you like.
I use a spoon to check for the right consistency. When it is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, I'm there.
When the sauce is reduced to your liking, remove it from the heat and add the cream, butter, and crushed peppercorns.
Taste and season for salt. It should be a good consistency, but you can always reduce it a little more if you like.
The whole process should take about 20 minutes or 30 minutes less than the "longer" version and, in my opinion, will have much more flavor using a real demi.

Notes

To prep the green peppercorns, I removed them from the jar, drained any of the brine and placed them into a Ziploc bag. I then proceeded to smash them with a meat mallet I use for pounding chicken breasts or veal into scaloppini. You could also try using your heavy bottomed saucepan or even a can of soup.

This recipe is very similar to the longer version except there isn't as much time spent making reductions because you are already using a stock reduction with the demi glace.