Pan-Seared Steaks with Brandy-Pink Peppercorn Sauce and Mashed Potatoes

Total Time: 1 hour

Source: Spiced for the steaks, mashed potatoes here (though I’m sure it’s in at least one of my cookbooks)

Serves: We finished it with three people, but one of our steaks was too small and we definitely overate. The steaks should have served four and the potatoes could have easily served five.

We spent so much time in the kitchen today, and very little of that time was for dinner. This was super easy and super delicious. I manned the potatoes and Sean handled the steaks, but there wasn’t much overlap so one person probably could have covered both dishes in not much more than an hour without too much stress.

I used russet potatoes for the mashed potatoes because I’m using more russets to make mashed potatoes on Christmas, and I felt a little pressed when it came down to time to serve the steaks (because I had one giant potato that didn’t want to cook) so I didn’t peel them and just mashed them all together. Even with the giant potato and skins, the potatoes were pretty smooth with very little mashing and general effort, so this recipe is a winner.

The steaks were super tasty. We had to order pink peppercorns off of Amazon because I couldn’t find them in any stores, so that was a tad pricey and I have a bunch of pink peppercorns to use now, but they were totally worth it. They add a lot of flavor without a lot of peppery spiciness and they worked so well with the sauce. The sauce was perfect with the mashed potatoes, too. I mixed them all up and it was all so good. Excellent dinner for Christmas week.