Many years ago there were elegant family Christmas dinners. Those gave way to a more casual dining experience. Soup and sandwiches on Christmas Eve. Brunch on Christmas morning followed by presents and then a dinner of turkey tetrazzini. I volunteered for us to host Christmas Eve and promptly asked what was sacrosanct. My brother replied with the soup and sandwich menu. Then, he replied that he guessed nothing was. There it was. My permission to once again have an elegant Christmas dinner. Time to plan. One of my happy places is with a cookbook in hand.
I quickly settled on beef tenderloin. Then, I goofed. What temperature does everyone like your meat? Here are the answers: Pat - well done. Deb - medium well. Pam - well. Sam and CJ - medium to medium rare. Connie and John - medium rare. Kate - rare. LOL. What a conundrum. Fortunately I have an incredibly brilliant brother and an equally brilliant nephew. They'd come up with a plan for turkey that'd work just great for tenderloin.
Sous vide. I got the Joule out and put a huge pot of water on the stove. The Joule got plugged in and set at 160 for well done. Connie had cleaned and cut up the tenderloin into four pieces. Two at four ounces and two at eight ounces. I figured I'd be just as happy with medium rare as rare and Sam and CJ would have to settle for their first thought. Although for future reference, CJ really loves rare. So, I'll be cooking a rare batch for the two of us! Each salted and peppered piece was in a ziploc bag and was labeled with permanent marker. Pat's 4 oz piece went into the water for an hour. Then once the timer rang, I ladled some of the hot water out and poured in cool tap water. That immediately took the temp down to 150 for medium well. Pat's piece stayed in the water and Deb's got added.
How did that work, you ask. With sous vide you never cook to more than the temp you've set. So, Pat's piece wound up being kept warm at slightly lower temps once hers had cooked at 170.
When Deb's piece was done I put in one of the 8 ounce bags and set the timer for 90 minutes. And, the temp at 135. This time I had to take a bit more water out to get the temp down. Finally, it was time for the last piece. It was due to come out at 5:15. Dinner was at 5:45 so there was plenty of time for reverse searing and resting. Two cast iron skillets were on the stove getting screaming hot. Two tablespoons of butter went into each followed by the tenderloin pieces. A few minutes later they were beautifully browned and ready to rest under a foil tent.
Here's what the medium rare piece looked like. I've got to say, this was a PERFECT way to cook the tenderloin. So perfect that we may just do the same next year!
On the side I had a plate with asparagus, crab and Bearnaise sauce for anyone who wanted Oscar style. The photo is before the crabmeat went into the bowl...
Then, there was a bowl of horseradish sauce. And, lastly, we'd bought a bunch of beef bones and made a wonderful beef stock so I'd made Yorkshire puddings and gravy.
The rest of the meal? I'll have to cover that in another post.
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