This delicious pepper steak dish is quick and simple enough to make on a weeknight but special enough for a weekend treat too. The garlic soy sauce butter is really delicious and there’s lovely warmth from the black pepper. The recipe is from Tim Anderson’s Your Home Izakaya, a cookbook sharing the cuisine of Japanese drinking dens.
Like many izakaya favourites, this dish offers bold, satisfying flavours that are perfect with a bottle of beer or perhaps a glass of sake or shochu.
Read our full review of Your Home Izakaya by Tim Anderson.
Japanese Pepper Steak With Garlic Soy Sauce Butter
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 300-400 g (10½–14 oz) ribeye steak, ideally at least 2.5 cm (1 in) thick, patted dry with paper towels
- a very generous amount of coarsely ground black pepper
- 4 tbsp water
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sake
- 1 tbsp honey
- 20 g (¾ oz) butter
- 3 garlic cloves thinly sliced
Notes
Instructions
- Set a frying pan (skillet) over high heat and add the oil. Season the steak all over with the pepper. When the oil is smoking hot, lay the steak in the pan and cook it on one side until nicely browned, about 2–3 minutes. Turn and brown the other side, again for about 2 minutes. By this point the steak should be rare; keep cooking for a further 2 minutes for medium-rare and another 2 minutes after that for medium, flipping the steak every 20 seconds to form an even crust and cuisson. When the steak is cooked to your liking, remove it from the pan and leave to rest on a chopping board.
- Remove the pan from the heat and add the water, then set the pan back over the heat and add the soy sauce, sake, honey, butter and garlic. Simmer for 4–5 minutes until the liquid reduces slightly and the garlic infuses into the gravy, then remove from the heat.
- Slice the steak into bite-size cubes, about 2 cm (¾ in) wide, and toss through the pan sauce.
From start to finish, including ingredients prep, this recipe takes only 20-30 minutes, making it a great choice for a busy weekday evening, or anytime you want a tasty dinner fast!
We enjoyed ours over rice with Addictive Cabbage (also in the book) on the side. A great alternative to the cabbage would be some pickles, or a simple crunchy green salad.
If you decide to buy this book after reading our content, please consider clicking through our affiliate link, located within the post and in the footnote below.
Kavey Eats received a review copy of Your Home Izakaya by Tim Anderson from publisher Hardie Grant. Book photography by Laura Edwards. Our photography by Kavita Favelle.
Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!6 Comments to "Japanese Pepper Steak with Garlic Soy Sauce Butter"
We’re about to prepare this dish for the second time, the first for a dinner-for-two on NYEve (since The Virus curtailed our eating with others). On both occasions we were lucky to snag ribeye steaks at a discount as they were close to the sell-by date. We had so enjoyed it the first time that, when another steak was available, we agreed this was the way to go. I have heard Tim Anderson several times on the BBC podcast “The Kitchen Cabinet” where he is an occasional panelist. As Americans and their cuisine are not-infrequently disparaged by the British these days, I appreciate his sharing not only American culinary practices but Japanese ones as well. I thank him for contributing this recipe as well, and look forward to his informative cookbook where this appeared. Thanks, Tim for this quick and tasty offering! And thanks, Kavey, for including it here!
It’s such a delicious recipe, isn’t it, an I’m very grateful to the publishers and Tim for the permission to share it here. It’s a great book, I really recommend it. American cuisine, like British, went through a period of being derided by outsiders but both have so many wonderful wonderful dishes, it’s a mistake to discard either cuisine. Japanese cuisine is one of my very favourites!
Absolutely delicious! Unfortunately our online shop had substituted the two ribeye steaks for a rump and sirloin but I decided to press on nonetheless and had no regrets, although I would definitely follow the advice and cut against the grain for thicker steaks.
Overall a simple and great tasting recipe which was very easy to make. It was great to try a Japanese take on steak and I can’t wait to try this again with the ribeyes.
As an added bonus, we made these on a Thursday afternoon after work and still had time to take out the dog before it got dark – would definitely recommend if you’re after something simple for a midweek meal.
It’s ridiculously tasty and ridiculously quick isn’t it? Bet the dog was jealous of the steak even as he got his evening walk!
The decadent sweet savory sauce is absolutely on point with so many Japanese dishes I’ve learned, cooked, and invented. We used the sauce recipe after barbequing ribeye on lump charcoal with salt and plenty of pepper, and use the resting juices in lieu of frond and it came out so so good. I’m adding that book to my collection for sure, and thank you for sharing.
So happy you enjoyed it so much as this is such a fabulous recipe from a really fabulous cookbook!