Okay, so this is kind of our flagship dish. Über delicious Beef Tenderloin slathered in garlicky herby goodness and roasted to perfection. I mean, c’mon, it’s an entire Filet Mignon roast for crying out loud! This is the one that use to impress all our friends. We call our family and brag whenever we eat it (which is every month-or-so). We love, love, L-O-V-E love it! And the best part is that it’s really, really, easy.
We’re lucky to have a line on the most awesome local grass-fed beef, and we get a smoking deal on it. Normally I’d say that beef tenderloins would be out of our price range, since they typically run $25 to $30 a pound, but since we only pay about half that much it’s totally worth it for us. We don’t eat a lot of red meat, anyway. In fact, this is pretty much it other than the odd Ribeye here and there. Basically, we’re chicken and fish folks for the most part.
We started with a whole 2.6 pound tenderloin (the all natural ones around here tend to be a little on the small side, figure on 3 to 5 pounds, normally). We trimmed off the silverskin, membraney stuff and any gnarly fat chunks, we then cut off the pointy end and the big, bulbous end and we were left with the nice, uniform cylindrical center section about 8 inches long, 3 to 4 inches wide (it tapers a little), and around 1 1/4 pounds or so (If you go buy a tenderloin roast at the store you’ll probably just get the middle portion). We’ve found that the two end hunks that are left over can be tied together for a nice roast later on, the prep is pretty much the same.
Here’s what you need:
- 1 gigantic or 2 normal size Garlic cloves, crushed or minced really, really fine
- 1 1/2 to 2 Tbsp of whole Fennel Seed, ground up or chopped up really fine somehow (we use the Pampered Chef Cutting Edge Food Chopper
, it’s fun to have tools you can smack around. Works great for nuts, too)
- 1 tsp or so of fresh chopped Rosemary
- 1tsp or so of Salt
- 1/2 tsp or so of freshly ground Black Pepper
- Enough Olive OIl to make a paste
Mix this all together and let it rest for a bit so the flavors will blend, at least 15 minutes if you can manage.
- Preheat the oven to 350°
- Get a skillet on the stove over high heat
- Rub the Tenderloin with a little Olive Oil and then sear it for a 45 seconds or so on every side, including the ends
- Take it out of the pan and put it in your roasting pan, no rack, no nothin’, just the pan. We just use our trusty Pyrex baking dish, mostly because it’s the only suitable pan we’ve got.
- Spoon your garlic-herb paste over the roast, try to keep it all on top ‘cuz it’ll run down the sides while the roast is, uh, roasting.
- Put your roast with the nice thick ribbon of paste on it into the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes, though it could take longer if you start with a larger roast. Ours usually come out perfect this way, but you may need to go a little longer or shorter depending on your oven/altitude/mojo or whatever.
- Roast it until it reaches an internal temperature of 135°.
- Pull it out of the oven, tent it with foil or stick a lid over it and let it rest for 10 or 15 minutes (now’s a good time to throw together a side dish of some kind), the internal temp will continue to rise 5 to 10° while it’s resting. It’ll also suck up any garlic-herb-meat juice that’s touching it. You’ll be glad you waited…trust us on this.
When you’re ready to eat it (or just rub it all over your body) slice it 3/4 to an inch wide and spoon some of the garlic-herb-meat juice goody that’s left the pan over it. We’ve never felt the need to doctor it up with a fancier sauce than that. It’s plenty good the way it is, though you could deglaze your roasting pan (don’t do this with a glass pan, only fancy stainless steel pans that you can put on the stove). Put the pan over medium heat and throw in a little port or red wine, scrape up all the bits and stir it until it all comes together, take it off the heat and finish the sauce with a little hunk of butter…you know, if you wanted to.
You can see from the photo that it comes out a pretty perfect medium rare when cooked this way and, frankly, it’d be a shame to smother meat this good with too much gunk. I mean, you can cut this with a fork! No knife! Don’t ruin your meaty perfection (and considerable investment) by overcooking or over-saucing it. C’mon…show a little restraint here.
We’ll eat this with anything but our favorite is Roasted Beet Salad with Orange Balsamic Vinaigrette and Sauteed Beet Greens. We’ll post recipes for those as soon as we have a chance to make them. Soon…very soon…
Oh man, that looks cooked to perfection. I’m drooling. I can taste the salty garlicy goodness from here. Nice job.
Thanks! We love this stuff. We’ve had really good luck cooking it like this, never over or underdone…so far…*knocks on wood*.
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