Issue #64: What Is Pepper Steak, Anyway?

My Mother's Approach to Family Cooking, A Jewish-Chinese Dish, Perhaps?, London Notebook Coming Soon

The garden chronicles continue. While we still have a ton-o-zucchini to deal with, now the pepper plants are heavy with fruit. Being able to cook from a garden is both exhilarating and overwhelming at times. There is so much produce to deal with at once. If dining out is more your thing, you should know that later this week I will release my London Notebook, a roundup of restaurants and other food sources from my two recent trips in June and July. My city notebooks—which include Paris and Tel Aviv—are only available to paid subscribers. If you like my point of view about what is good to eat, I think you’ll appreciate the advice. But you’ll need to pony up. Thanks to all my subscribers, both paid and free, and thanks to anyone considering making the switch to support this work.—Mitchell

My mother was a very good cook. Though her repertoire and her spice cabinet were limited, she compensated by using plenty of onions, butter, and salt. It was always important for us to sit down together as a family for dinner. We would wait until my father got home if he was delayed at work. The timing didn’t matter much for the food, as my mother’s approach was to do most of the cooking in the morning so she didn’t have to worry about it or rush home later in the day. Rarely was anything cooked à la minute. With at least four hungry kids at home—I have three older siblings, but we were always the house where friends and strays gathered, often for months at a time—she had to cook more than we would eventually eat at the meal because we would pick at things all day long as they sat.

This is likely how I developed my appreciation for food served lukewarm and how I began to recognize that some dishes improve as they sit around. When I was older and started traveling through countries in the Mediterranean, I was pleased to find a similar appreciation of these qualities. Greece was a revelation.

I, too, am a morning cook, meaning I prefer to get up early and get most of my cooking done before I start my day. Morning is my productive time in the kitchen. One of the reasons I have never loved cooking in restaurants is that most of of the action happens at night.  

Pepper Steak, revisited.

Pepper steak appeared regularly in my mother’s dinner rotation. She loved beef and she loved peppers, though she hated how green bell peppers “repeated” on her. For pepper steak, she preferred cubanelle peppers, the long, light green, sweet, frying peppers that were sometimes called “Italian peppers.” Of course, she made an extra-large batch of her pepper steak in the morning, in the large, yellow, straight-sided, warped, scratched, no-longer-non-stick frying pan she used for almost everything. We picked at it all day long.

The other day, faced with a surfeit of sweet, green Hungarian peppers Nate and I picked from a friend’s garden, while in the fridge I had a package of local, grass-fed beef labeled “minute steak” I was intending to use for lo mein, I was inspired to change course and recreate the pepper steak of my youth.

The perfume of these just-picked peppers filled the room as soon as I cut into them. So distinct and delicious.

Aside: To me, someone who worked in a butcher shop in high school and who T.A.-ed the meats class at Cornell’s Hotel School for three years, “minute steak” means cheap, thin, mechanically tenderized pieces of beef that are meant to be pan-fried quickly, but still remain quite tough. When I went back to the co-op to buy more of this curiously delicious “minute steak” to make this dish again, I learned it was actually thinly sliced top sirloin from a local farm, ready to fry—perfect for pepper steak and stir fries. The butcher told me it was an anomaly, sliced off something that had no other purpose, the name and code made up on the spot. I suggested they should sell it. Instead, I bought skirt steak, which is what my mother would have used, anyway.

I have no idea what the origins of pepper steak are, though it seems vaguely Chinese, reinforced by the steamed white rice my mother always served on the side. I suspect it falls into the limited but discrete category of suburban Jewish Chinese food—you know, authentic Chinese dishes like kreplach made with wonton skins and those weird salads topped with crispy chow mein noodles. When I posted a photo of my pepper steak on Instagram the other day, several friends who also grew up in suburban Jewish households recalled the pepper steak of their youths. A longtime friend (and bubbe) in California told me she still makes it, now with ginger—even more Chinese.

I don’t remember exactly how my mother made her pepper steak, but I know how she cooked things generally. Plenty of onions, salt, tomato paste, it wasn’t hard to approximate. My best guess turned out to be so delicious Nate decided pepper steak should enter into our own dinner rotation. I hope you like it enough to put it in yours.

Where’s the rice?

RECIPE: Pepper Steak

(Serves 2 to 4)

• About ½ pound skirt steak, flank steak, “minute steak,” or another flavorful, tender cut of beef

• Salt

• Peanut or other neutral vegetable oil

• 1 large white or yellow Spanish onion, split in half vertically and sliced

• 1 ½ pounds sweet, green frying peppers (about 8 peppers), such as cubanelle or Hungarian peppers, split lengthwise, seeded, and cut into chunks

• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped

• 1 heaping teaspoon double-concentrated tomato paste

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• ½ cup beef, chicken, or vegetable stock, or water

• Freshly ground black pepper

Lay the steak out flat on a cutting board and pat dry with paper towel. Using a sharp knife held on an acute angle in relation to the cutting board, slice the meat across the grain into thin strips. Toss with salt and set aside.

In a large frying pan, heat a tablespoon or two of oil over medium-high heat. Add the sliced onion and a pinch of salt and cook until the onion wilts and the edges begin to brown, 7 or 8 minutes. Add the peppers and continue cooking until the peppers also wilt and begin to brown. Add the garlic and cook just a couple of minutes more, maybe 12 minutes total. Remove the cooked vegetables to a plate, scraping out all the bits from the pan. Don’t worry about any browned bits stuck on the bottom of the pan. Return the pan to the heat and add another tablespoon or so of oil.

Add the steak to the hot oil and sauté, laying the strips out so they brown and then tossing often so the meat cooks evenly, 5 or 6 minutes. Add the tomato paste and soy sauce and continue cooking, coating the meat with this umami-rich mixture as it heats. Add the pepper and onion mixture back to the pan along with any juice that has accumulated on the plate. Pour in the stock and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce thickens, another couple of minutes. Add a pinch of salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper. Taste the sauce, adjust the seasoning, and serve with steamed rice.

Pepper steak can be made in advance and reheated before serving, though it’s good at room temperature, too.

Pepper steak, the centerpiece of a delicious meal (the steamed rice is in the wooden container).