Beef Tenderloin Prep

Beef Tenderloin Trimming and Preparing

Holiday is coming and the main course for Thanksgiving this year is Beef Wellington (I can’t wait!). To make good Beef Wellington, I will need a nice piece of beef tenderloin. Tenderloin can be quite expensive. Wegmans has them at whopping 24$ a pound! Costco has the cleaned up tenderloin at 20$. Right next to the trimmed tenderloin is the whole tenderloin, Choice grade (which is better than what most supermarkets sell), at $11.39 a pound. Well, that’s a steal.

A beautiful piece like this cost less than 80 dollars!

It seems daunting to clean up a big piece of meat like this. I did quite a lot of homework. The best tutorial was from Wegmans Executive Chef Russell Ferguson’s demonstration on YouTube. This guy is awesome.

After opening the package, let the liquid drip, and pat the meat dry with paper towel, do NOT wash the meat. I had several knives sharpened and set aside for the job, it turned out I only needed a small knife as long as it’s sharp and thin. The purple knife was the only one I used throughout this trimming and cleaning.

Following chef’s instruction, I pulled the membrane and the chain came off easily just with light tucks with hands.

The next step is to remove the silver skin, which eventually was the only thing I threw away, about 2 oz. Silver skin is tough, I can have a good grip and lift it easily. However, it’s better not to pull it off the meat, because the meat underneath was so tender, it would rip. So I used the sharp knife and glide down the skin in order not to remove much meat.

Once the silver skin is all removed, the work is mostly done.

I cut out the center part, Chateaubriand, getting ready for Beef Wellington. It is so beautiful, and it’s so tender that when I accidentally used a little bit force on my fingers, my fingers poked through the meat.