What steps do you guys recommend for recovering blown highlights??
None! By definition, they're blown! Once they become pure white, there's no information in the image at that location to be corrected. You must do everything you can when you take the shot to make sure the brightest areas are not overexposed like that.
If you're shooting RAW and your image has areas that are too bright, but not pure white, you can use your RAW converter to adjust the exposure or brightness down. There's often slightly more information in the image than you can see on the histogram on the back of the camera, so even if it says you've blown it you may still be able to recover things. But that's really pushing it (pulling it, actually).
Have a look at most of the high end DSLR reviews on this site and you'll see specific steps taken to try and recover information from overexposed areas of images. It's done in an attempt to extract maximum dynamic range from the image and also has an effect on the darker areas of the image too. By using what some would call extreme settings in your RAW converter, you can recover some information from what appears to be completely white areas, but you do so at the risk of introducing colour casts into your image in these areas because you're dealing with the extremes of the performance envelope for the sensor. It's far, far, better to make sure you don't over-expose the image in the first place.
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