Whether you’d like to indulge in a fancy meal without the priciness of a restaurant or impress the heck out of your dinner date, this easy filet mignon with wild mushroom sauce is guaranteed to work.–Angie Zoobkoff
Filet Mignon with Wild Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cauliflower mushroom or 3 ounces (85 g) oyster mushrooms*
- 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) butter
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- Two (5-ounce) filet mignon, at room temperature
- 3 3/4 ounces porcini*, quartered
- 1 1/2 ounces chanterelles
- 1 1/2 ounces girolles*
- 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 1 1/2 tablespoons brandy
- 4 black truffle shavings (optional)
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh curly parsley, plus more for garnish
- Sea salt, ground black pepper, and, if desired, pink peppercorns
Instructions
- If using a cauliflower mushroom, place it in a small pan and fill with boiling water. Simmer for 5 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again. Tear the mushroom into bite-size pieces. If using oyster mushrooms, add them in step 4 without blanching.
- In a nonstick skillet or cast iron skillet, heat 1 tablespoon butter and all of the oil until sizzling. Add the filet mignon and cook, turning once, for 2 minutes per side for rare or about 3 1/2 minutes on each side if you prefer medium-rare.
- Sear the edge of each steak by picking it up with tongs and rolling it around the pan. Place the steaks on a warm plate and loosely cover with foil.
- Turn the heat to low, then add 1 tablespoon butter to the skillet and cook the porcini, chanterelles, girolles, and oysters, if using, for 3 minutes.
- Add the garlic, stir, and cook for 2 minutes, then turn the heat up and carefully add the cauliflower mushroom and brandy. Cook for 1 minute, then add the truffle shavings, if using, and parsley and season with the salt and pepper.
- Transfer the steaks to plates and top with the mushroom mixture. Season with pink peppercorns, if desired, and sprinkle with parsley.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
This is a “knock one’s socks off” recipe.
I cooked the steaks by our tried-and-true preferred method for cooking steaks. It involves grilling our steaks on our Big Green Egg. We end up with beautifully medium-rare steaks from top to bottom, side to side, no perimeters of gray in sight.
Now to the “knock one’s socks off” part of the recipe… the wild mushroom and truffle sauce. Wow! It was truly a weak-in-the-knees sauce for the steaks as well as a side for the creamy buttermilk mashed potatoes that I made to serve with the steaks.
I ended up buying what mushrooms my mushroom purveyor had that morning that looked the best to me. I decided against cremini and portobello mushrooms, wanting something a bit more fancy, a bit more unusual. I am a big fan of king trumpet mushrooms because they remind me of porcinis. I also bought tree oyster mushrooms because they were beautiful that morning. I bought a combination of the two, going heavily on the king trumpets, for a total of about 11 oz. That is what one should do, buy what looks good, not a specific type of mushroom just because it’s listed in a recipe. For example, he had one of the stated mushrooms, but they were imported from China, and looked very dried out. I was not going to buy them.
The method for cooking the mushrooms was spot on, and they attained a beautiful caramel color. The pièce de résistance was the black truffle that we shaved over the mushrooms. It was a truffle that we had brought home from Italy. Oh my! (Sigh! I am salivating thinking about this dish.) Finding another black truffle might be a challenge, however, I am lucky to be able to find really good wild mushrooms.
I did try a small piece of the steak with some very good black truffle salt sprinkled over it. That was very tasty, so I can always recreate most of the dish, and rely on my taste memory of the black truffle, paired with the black truffle salt. I am not going to let not having a truffle keep me from enjoying this dish.
Absolutely loved this. The mushroom sauce came together quickly and added a beautiful, restaurant-quality touch to the dish that made it feel super classy without all of the extra work. I wouldn’t change a thing.
I couldn’t find cauliflower mushrooms so I used oyster mushrooms and it turned out great.
