Recipes / Beef Tenderloin

For the fillets: Preheat the oven to 230°C. Remove the steak from the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to cooking, this is to bring the steak to room temperature & ensure your cooking times are more accurate. Season all sides liberally with salt & pepper.

Add 1-2 tablespoons of oil to a cast iron skillet & turn the heat to high, allowing the skillet to become very hot; distribute oil as it heats & place the filets face down & sear undisturbed for 2 minutes. Turn the fillets & sear for an additional 2 minutes giving your filets a nice seared edge.

Add some herb butter & a whole garlic clove, tarragon & rosemary to the pan before transferring it to the oven. The butter will melt & the herbs will season the pan enhancing the flavour profile of your sauce when we come to make this.

Transfer your skillet directly to the oven. For rare, bake for 4 minutes. Medium rare, 5-6 minutes. Medium, 6-7 minutes. Medium well, go & purchase a hamburger instead.

Depending on the size of the steak, the more or less time it will take. Monitor continually during the cooking process.

Spoon some of the seasoned pan juices over the steak to infuse it with extra flavour.

Remove fillets from the skillet & set on a plate & let sit for 5-10 minutes before serving. This is important to bring your steak to its final serving temperature.
Top with a slice of garlic & herb butter & serve.

Notes

Temperatures for steak
Rare: 48°C to 50°C
Medium rare: 50°C to 55°C
Medium: 60°C to 65°C

Cooking meat is a combination of physics, chemistry, & biology. Each cut has somewhat different properties based on its composition & structure, & different types of cooking will yield the best* results for various cuts. In almost all cases, cooking a steak to well done will produce objectively poorer results in terms of flavour, texture, aroma, & juiciness.

When talking about “steak”, most people are referring not to all red meat in general, but to beef from cows. Further, steak typically refers to specific cuts & preparations, such as sirloin, porterhouse, strip, rib eye, tenderloin & cube roll as an example.

While there may be slight variation in the optimal cooking temperature for various cuts, different breeds, different cooking methods, etc, I can’t think of a single type of steak that is objectively better well done.

There are many other cuts of meat (such as short rib, brisket, etc.) that benefit from long cooking times to break down connective tissue. But nothing that is normally referred to as a steak fits that description.

The techniques used for cooking beef for long periods of time are different from those used on steak, & specifically allow for the introduction of additional liquid to prevent dryness, & often employ lower temperatures so that the meat doesn’t suffer from the long cook time.

Generally, cooking a steak optimally seeks to take advantage of two major reactions, from a chemistry/physics standpoint. The first is what is referred to as the “Maillard reaction”. That’s what gives the browned exterior of the beef (& other foods) its desirable flavour.

It’s usually characterized as a rich “umami” quality. If the steak is cooked beyond the optimal point, that browned portion is replaced by burnt/charred areas that not only lack the rich flavour from the Maillard reaction, but replace it with bitter, undesirable (& some say carcinogenic) straight carbon.

The second important thing that happens when you cook a steak is that the marbling fat inside the meat renders & melts into the meat.
If this process doesn’t happen, due to undercooking, the meat will not be as tender or as rich tasting as it could be. This is why, to a true steak lover, ordering a steak too rare can be just as much a faux pas as ordering it well done. You want to cook it just to the point where the marbling fat renders but isn’t consumed by the heat & burned off or lost.

Overcooking a highly marbled steak will make it tougher & more fibrous, as the muscle fibres tighten & the proteins denature completely. To get the most complex flavours out of a steak, you want to have the Maillard browning on the outside, the fat rendering on the inside, the nutty quality of the aging, & the mineral & sanguine aspects of the beef flesh all present.

There is a point around medium rare that is the “best” for eating & preserving all of those qualities. Eating it at any other temperature is akin to saying, “I want my steak to have less (or simpler) flavour”. If you said that about any other food, you are inviting “ridicule”.

The leaner the cut of meat, & the less marbling fat there is to render, the less the steak must be cooked to reach the ideal point as described above. A lean cut like tenderloin is best done slightly rarer than a fattier cut; take for example a cube roll which is heavily marbled & you want to render it fat content to permeate & add flavour to the meat.

Similarly, many game animals are very lean, & extreme care must be be taken not to overcook, kangaroo is a prime example where medium rare is essentially the optimum degree of “doneness” you want to consider.