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Roasted Beef Tenderloin

Tamara R. turned us on to this easy method of cooking a beef tenderloin. In the example below, from Dec. 2020, we used a roughly 2-pound center-cut tenderloin (aka chateaubriand). We got a whole tenderloin (about 4+ pounds), and cut out the middle section for roasting, leaving the ends for filet de boef(sp?).

Cooking it:

• Preheat oven to 500
• Bring tenderloin to room temp or just slightly cooler
• Put tenderloin in oven in a roasting pan
• Cook for 5 minutes, then turn off oven
• Leave in oven 15 minutes per pound of tenderloin without opening oven door (our ~2lb loin went 26 minutes and was perfect)
• Confirm cooking temp with a meat thermometer.

Recipe suggestion (from Christmas 2020)

• pressed garlic (2 pods)
• fresh rosemary leaves
• salt
• pepper
• slight dash chili powder
• very slight dash cinnamon

• finely chop rosemary leaves and mush them up with pressed garlic to make a sort-of paste
• dry the tenderloin with paper towels
• sprinkle liberally with salt and fresh-cracked pepper, as well as a wee bit of chili and cinnamon
• rub garlic/rosemary mix all over tenderloin
• let sit for 1-2 hours
• Cook, as indicated above
• Loosely tent with foil and let rest 20 minutes or so before serving

Red wine sauce

Found a good red wine sauce at Once Upon a Chef

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1/4 cup+ finely chopped shallots
• 3/4 cup red wine
• 1 cup beef broth (I did bouillon cube + water)
• 3 fresh thyme sprigs (I used rosemary b/c we head it available)
• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Prep

• Melt the butter in a saucepan; reserve about a TBsp
• Cook shallots over med-low heat until they're translucent
• Add the wine, beef broth, thyme (rosemary) sprigs, salt, pepper and sugar, and bring to a boil.
• Cook until reduced by 1/2
• While it's cooking, soften remaining TBsp of butter and stir the flour into it to make a paste
• Once the wine mixture is reduced, reduce the heat to low and remove the thyme sprigs. Whisk the flour-butter paste, a teaspoonful at a time, into the simmering liquid, and simmer for a few minutes, until the sauce is thickened. Set aside. (The sauce can be made up to this point and refrigerated up to 3 days ahead of time.)