Copycat Peter Luger Steak Sauce (The Restaurant Secret Is Anchovies and Tamarind)
Prep time: 10 min Cook time: 15 min Yield: About 1.5 cups (serves 12)
TL;DR: The Peter Luger steak sauce recipe most people make online tastes close but not quite right — because they are missing two ingredients that appear on the actual bottled label: anchovy paste and tamarind concentrate. The anchovy adds savory depth without any fishiness. The tamarind adds a fruity tartness that vinegar alone cannot replicate. Combine both with ketchup, molasses, Worcestershire, horseradish, and vinegar, simmer for 10 minutes, and the result is nearly identical to what arrives at the table in a small ceramic dish. The sauce also unlocks the at-home porterhouse: dry-aged USDA Prime, reverse-seared to 120°F, then seared hard in cast iron with continuous butter basting — the closest home method to the restaurant’s extreme-heat salamander broiler.
Peter Luger opened in 1887 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — originally as “Carl Luger’s Café, Billiards and Bowling Alley,” in a German immigrant neighborhood at 178 Broadway. By the mid-twentieth century it had become a cult destination built around a single proposition: hand-selected USDA Prime beef, dry-aged on the premises for approximately 28 days, cooked at extreme heat, and served with almost nothing else. The Michelin Guide held it as a starred restaurant for more than a decade before dropping the star in October 2022. The famous cash-only policy and brusque service are features, not bugs. A porterhouse for two runs roughly $120 to $160 depending on weight.
The steak sauce came as an afterthought and became a product. The bottled “Peter Luger Steak House Old Fashioned Sauce” is sold at Wegmans, Publix, Giant, and online. The real ingredient label reads: tomatoes, vinegars, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt, grated horseradish roots, molasses, water, caramel color, onion, garlic, eschalots, spices, anchovies, natural flavor, and tamarind. Most home copycat versions — even well-reviewed ones — skip the anchovies and tamarind and end up with a competent steak sauce that tastes like a ketchup-horseradish blend. This recipe does not skip them.
The Two Secret Ingredients
Anchovy paste
Anchovies are 30 to 40 percent glutamates by weight — the compounds responsible for umami, the savory depth that makes food taste more like itself. At half a teaspoon, the anchovy paste in this recipe is well below the threshold where anyone tastes fish. What they taste instead is a sauce that seems rounder, more complete, and more savory than the same recipe without it. This is why anchovy paste appears in Worcestershire sauce, Caesar dressing, and here. You will not identify anchovies. You will notice the sauce has a quality you cannot attribute to the other ingredients. That is the anchovy.
Anchovy paste is sold in small tubes in the canned fish or condiment aisle of most grocery stores (Roland and Cento are common brands). One tube lasts months refrigerated. It is inexpensive and worth keeping permanently.
Tamarind concentrate
Tamarind is the dried fruit of the Tamarindus indica tree, used throughout Indian, Southeast Asian, and Mexican cooking for its distinctive fruity tartness — darker and more complex than citrus, with notes of dates, molasses, and mild stone fruit. In the Peter Luger sauce, it is present in small enough quantities that you will not taste “tamarind” — you will taste a fruity tartness that reads as more interesting than vinegar alone, and that is identifiably present in the bottled sauce.
Tamarind concentrate is widely available at Indian and Southeast Asian grocery stores and increasingly at Whole Foods (Tamicon is the most common U.S. brand). If you cannot find concentrate, buy a block of tamarind paste (seedless) and dissolve a small piece in warm water until you have a thick paste. Start with half a teaspoon and adjust.
| Ingredient | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Ketchup | Tomato base, sweetness, body |
| Worcestershire | Savory depth, slight tang |
| Vinegar (white + cider) | Bright acidity |
| Molasses | Dark sweetness, slight bitterness |
| Brown sugar | Clean sweetness, balance |
| Prepared horseradish | Heat, bite |
| Anchovy paste | Umami depth, savory roundness |
| Tamarind concentrate | Fruity tartness, complexity |
The At-Home Porterhouse Method
The restaurant runs a proprietary salamander broiler that reaches temperatures estimates place between 700°F and over 1,000°F. Home ovens top out at 550°F on broil. The gap is real, and there is no way to fully close it. The closest home technique is the reverse sear:
What the reverse sear does: A 2-inch-thick porterhouse cooked entirely in a cast-iron skillet (even very hot) will be gray and overcooked toward the exterior before the center reaches temperature. The reverse sear inverts this: a low oven (250°F) brings the entire steak gently to just below your target temperature, then a violent sear in a ripping-hot pan creates the crust in 90 seconds per side without cooking the interior further. The result is edge-to-edge even doneness with a hard crust — closer to the restaurant’s method than any other home technique.
The dry-aging question at home: Peter Luger dry-ages in controlled rooms for 28 days. Home dry-aging requires a dedicated refrigerator with controlled humidity and airflow — not practical for most people. The realistic alternative is to buy dry-aged beef from a good butcher shop. Dry-aged USDA Prime is noticeably better than wet-aged Choice in a comparison on this dish; it is worth the extra cost for a special-occasion porterhouse.
Butter basting during the sear: The restaurant bastes the steak with clarified butter throughout the cooking process. During the home sear, continuous spooning of the hot butter over the top surface of the steak while the bottom sears replicates part of this effect — it adds flavor, keeps the surface from drying, and helps brown the edges.
Pre-slicing before serving: Peter Luger slices the steak before it reaches the table. This is not just theater — pre-slicing on a cutting board lets you pour the collected juices over the pieces, arrange them on a warm platter, and serve every piece already buttered and juiced. At home, replicate this by warming your serving platter in the oven during the reverse sear phase, then laying the sliced pieces on the hot surface with the pan butter poured over.
Tips & Variations
- Make the sauce at least a day ahead. The sauce is noticeably better after 24 hours in the refrigerator. The flavors integrate, the tamarind and anchovy recede into the background, and the sauce tastes like a cohesive condiment rather than a ketchup mixture. Making it the day before is easy and worth the small amount of planning.
- The wedge salad pairing. Peter Luger serves a thick-sliced beefsteak tomato and raw onion salad with the steak sauce poured directly over it — a dish that costs almost nothing and tastes remarkable with a good sauce. At home, replicate with thick-sliced summer tomatoes, thinly sliced red onion, and a generous pour of this sauce over the top. Add a wedge of iceberg with blue cheese dressing and a secondary pour of the steak sauce mixed in.
- On the burger. The Peter Luger burger (served only at lunch) is widely considered one of the best in New York City — a single-patty burger made from dry-aged beef trimmings from the porterhouse cuts, cooked in the same broiler. At home, make a smash burger from 80/20 ground beef and serve with this sauce. The sauce works better on the burger than standard ketchup in the same way it works better than A.1. on the steak: more interesting, without being complicated.
- Thickness matters. Do not attempt the reverse sear on a steak under 1.5 inches thick — the oven phase will overshoot the target temperature before it evens out. A standard supermarket 1-inch porterhouse should go straight to a hot cast-iron sear without the oven step. Two inches is the sweet spot for the reverse-sear method.
- Storing the sauce. This sauce keeps for up to 3 weeks in a sealed jar in the refrigerator. The anchovy paste is already cured; the acid from the vinegar and the sugar content keep the sauce shelf-stable under refrigeration. Bring to room temperature before serving — cold straight from the refrigerator, the flavors are muted.
Storage & Make-Ahead
The steak sauce stores in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks. It can be made up to a week in advance with no quality loss — the flavor actually improves through the first 48 hours. Bring to room temperature before serving; cold sauce on a hot steak is a waste of both.
The steak itself does not store well once cooked — a seared-then-refrigerated porterhouse is edible but loses most of what made it worth cooking. If you have leftover slices, use them cold in a steak sandwich with the sauce as a condiment.
More Restaurant-Famous Beef and Copycat Recipes
- Copycat Benihana Hibachi Steak — the garlic butter and soy baste that makes the Benihana teppanyaki steak taste like it does, with the flat-top technique replicated on a home cast-iron pan
- Copycat Longhorn Outlaw Ribeye — Longhorn’s signature butter-herb basted ribeye, with the specific seasoning blend from the restaurant’s rub
- Copycat Carbone Spicy Rigatoni Vodka — the famous Greenwich Village pasta with the full tube of tomato paste cooked until brick-red, made for about $8 a plate
- Copycat Rao’s Famous Meatballs — the most-requested item from the hardest reservation in New York, with the specific technique behind the light, tender texture
