Laura the Gastronaut > Julia Child > Meat > Bifteck Saute Bearnaise

Pan-broiled Steak with Béarnaise

March 24, 2019 | Updated August 22, 2023 | Laura

✽ Recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I | Julia Child ✽

Julia Child Recipes 27-32 | 496 recipes to go!

✽ Court Bouillon [The Aromatic Broth], p. 536
✽ Champignons à la Grecque [Mushrooms à la Grecque], p. 537
✽ Bifteck Sauté with Béarnaise Sauce [Pan-broiled Steak with Béarnaise Sauce], p. 295
✽ Sauce Béarnaise [Béarnaise Sauce], p. 84
✽ Haricots Verts Blanchis [Blanched Green Beans- Preliminary Cooking], p. 443
✽ Haricots Verts à l’Anglaise [Buttered Green Beans I], p. 444

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✽ Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I was written by Julia Child who co-authored with Simone Beck & Louisette Bertholle and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961.

✽ You can buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I which contains these recipes here. (affiliate link)

The purpose of this Julia Child section of my blog is to document my journey of learning how to cook. To show my successes, my failures, and what I learned along the way.

Since I didn't create these recipes (if only!), I do not post exact amounts of ingredients or word-for-word instructions. If any of these recipes spark your interest, I highly recommend you buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (affiliate link). It's a great investment and learning tool and contains hundreds of classic recipes.

I hope that you enjoy reading my thoughts, learn something new, and leave inspired to try a new recipe. Bon appétit!

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✽ Butter Count: +16 TB

✽ Cost: $36.03 [~$6.01 per serving]

- Pan-broiled Steak with Béarnaise Sauce= $21.76 [4-6 servings]
- Mushrooms à la Grecque= $8.33
- Buttered Green Beans I= $5.94 [6-8 servings]

Check out the total Julia Child butter count & cost here!

→ Looking for a different Julia Child recipe? Here's a list of all of the completed and pending Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipes!

This was another one of those meals that I was completely exhausted by the end of the whole process (planning, list making, grocery shopping, prep, cooking, eating, dishes..). I tip my hat to anybody that makes these sorts of meals on a regular basis because it’s hard work! But as always, worth it.

The pan-broiled steak is cooked to perfection, and you can never go wrong with a homemade bearnaise sauce. The green beans were nothing special- simple but good! As for the mushrooms, you gotta be a mushroom lover to want an entire side of these. I, personally, loved them!

Looking for more Julia Child steak recipes to read about?

→ Check out all of the meat recipes that I've completed so far!

The first thing I made with this meal were the mushrooms. These mushrooms are actually in the Cold Buffet chapter, not the Vegetable chapter.

There are many different varieties to this recipe using many different types of vegetables but I stuck to my rules and cooked the one that actually had a recipe list associated to it. So mushrooms it is!

✽ Step 1: Make Bouillon

The first step is making the aromatic broth. This was a super fun process. I got to make a cheesecloth sack full of herbs!

This little sack of herbs (parsley, celery seeds, fennel seeds, thyme, peppercorns, and coriander seeds) will make a beautifully tasting broth that the mushrooms will soak in.

✽ Step 2: Add Ingredients & Simmer

Alongside the cheesecloth bag is water, olive oil, salt, and green onions.

After the aromatic broth is done, the mushrooms are simmered in the broth. Once the mushrooms are done cooking, the broth is boiled down to a syrup.

✽ Step 4: Chill

The mushrooms and the broth are placed in a dish in the refrigerator because they are served cold!

They work well as hors d’oeuvre or you could add them to other vegetables for a composed salad.

✽ Step 1: Blanch Green Beans

Next up.. green beans! Before you cook the beans, you must give them a preliminary blanching in boiling salted water. They will be boiled until tender or almost tender. This step “always produces a fine, fresh, green bean of perfect texture and flavor.”

I decided to make a buttered bean. It’s a simple process- put the hot beans in a saucepan to evaporate their moisture and toss with seasonings. The butter is added once the beans are already in the serving dish. Served at once!

Sauce-making was next on my agenda. This is a béarnaise sauce, and it accompanies the steak. I like to call it Hollandaise sauce’s alcoholic cousin. The technique is very similar to hollandaise.

✽ Step 1: Make Bearnaise Sauce

First, the reduction of wine vinegar, dry white wine, shallots, herbs, and seasonings. Then the sauce- thicken the egg yolks by beating, strain reduction into egg yolks, add cold butter, heat over low heat, add melted butter, correct seasoning, and add in tarragon.

And BAM! You have a super fancy French sauce that will be sure to impress anybody sitting at your table.

✽ Step 2: Saute Steak & Deglaze

The last step was pan-broiling the steak. The steak was sautéed just like the previous steaks I have made.

After the steak is medium-rare, the pan is deglazed with wine and reduced. This will then be mixed into the béarnaise sauce.

And there you have it! The meal is served with potatoes and fresh watercress.

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Edit: These pictures are.. not great. I apologize. When making these early recipes I was working in an extremely tiny kitchen that had pratically zero counter space and very poor lighting. My only saving grace was that somebody once had one of those pull-out cutting boards installed. What a life saver.

I was also in pharmacy school, getting minimal sleep, working for free, completely broke, didn't know the first thing about taking photos, and knew practically nothing about French cooking (or cooking in general for that matter).

I've debated taking these old posts down but decided to keep them up because they are all a part of my journey. These photos and my written struggles remind me how far I've come. I can pretty much make some of these base recipes in my sleep now!

You don't need fancy equipment or the finest ingredients to enjoy cooking and make good food. As one of my favorite cartoon characters, Ms. Frizzle, says, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

*This blog, Laura the Gastronaut, and this post were/are not endorsed or supported by Julia Child or The Julia Child Foundation.

Category: Julia Child, Cold Buffet, Sauces, Meat Cuisine: French
Keywords: julia child steak recipe, julia child bearnaise sauce, french steak recipe, steak with bearnaise

✽ Did you make this recipe too?
→ Let me know by leaving a comment below and sharing on Instagram. Tag @laurathegastronaut and hashtag it #laurathegastronaut.

More Steak Recipes:

✽ Pan-broiled Steak (a simple but delicious steak)
✽ Bifteck Saute Bercy (a steak covered in shallot and white wine sauce)
✽ Steak au Poivre (one of my favorite steak recipes- covered in crushed peppercorns)
→ Check out all of the completed Julia Child meat recipes!

✽ You can find this recipe and all the other Julia Child recipes I make in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I (affiliate link).
→ Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I was written by Julia Child who co-authored with Simone Beck & Louisette Bertholle and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961.

✽ Check out my Julia Child Recipe Checklist to see a list of all my completed and pending recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking!

Bon appétit!

May 24, 2019 by Laura Ehlers

*This Bifteck Saute with Bearnaise Sauce blog post may contain some Amazon affiliate links. These link to products that I personally use and recommend. If you purchase anything using my links, it will not cost you anything. It will though give laurathegastronaut.com some financial support which helps me keep this blog running. Thank you for reading my blogs and your continued support.