Pellet Grill Beef Tenderloin

Hey, welcome back to How to Barbecue Right. I'm Malcolm Reed. Today I'm gonna show y'all how I do a smoked beef tenderloin on the pellet grill. This one's one of my personal favorites. Perfect for Father's Day. I'm gonna pair it up with a little mushroom red wine sauce that we're gonna make right on the pellet grill too. It's gonna be delicious y'all. Let's get to cooking. So what I have here is the center cut of a whole beef tenderloin. Now you can save some money by buying that Pismo cut from Sam's, Costco, even your local grocery store. It comes in a bag, trim it up. You lose that tail, you lose the tip, you lose the chain. What you're left is this beautiful Chateaubriand or the center part of that beef tenderloin. So you can get your butchers to do this for you or you can save some money and get those trimmings to do some other great recipes with. So the first thing we're gonna do to this beef tenderloin is get a little binder on the outside. And I'm just using some good old Lee and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. We're gonna flip it over and do the same thing. I just want a little moisture on it. I've had it sitting out on the counter for about 15, 20 minutes. It's gonna give us a little color and give us a little something for the seasoning to stick to. Now, first thing we're gonna do is hit it with a little bit of salt, pepper, garlic. Y'all know I'm using my AP rub. We're just going on with a good medium coat. We're not getting super crazy with it, but I want a base layer of salt and pepper and garlic. I'm gonna fortify that here in a minute. I'm just gonna kind of roll it over. Get this whole tenderloin seasoned on the outside. We want flavor. It's a dense piece of meat. It can take the salt, it can take the seasoning. That looks good on the AP. All sides coated. So the next thing I'm gonna add is a little bit of this Traeger Saskatchewan rub. It has a real nice dark color. A lot of garlic, a lot of black pepper, a lot of good seasonings. Goes great with red meat. If you don't have that, just substitute some extra black pepper, some of your favorite seasonings. You can pretty much use whatever you want on this tenderloin. We're just gonna roll it and do that same thing. We want it on all sides equally seasoned. I like the difference in the texture, the AP rub versus the Saskatchewan rub. Pairs really nice when we smoke. And that looks good right there. You can see that nice color on the outside. It looks good enough to eat almost right now. It needs to set just a few minutes to let these seasonings work on the outside of that beef. I'm gonna fire up the Traeger grill with some hickory pellets. Get it running at about 250. It's gonna be perfect time to put this thing on. So the Traeger is running about 250 degrees right now, just right at it. That's right where I want it. We've got the hickory smoke rolling. I'm just putting the beef tenderloin right on the rack, kind of off to the center just a little bit and straightening it up. We've just formed it up with our hands and it's gonna cook in this shape right here. Now, after about 30 minutes, I'm gonna put a probe in it and check that internal temperature. Right now, we just need to get some smoke on it. Let's go work on those mushrooms. So I've got about three pints of mushrooms going into an aluminum half-size steam pan. Now, this is an easy recipe. You don't have to do anything to it. Just dump it in and get it on the pit. We're gonna add a couple little shallots that I diced up, about five or six or as many cloves of garlic as you want. And then we need some of our friend butter. I'm not gonna use the whole stick. I'm gonna put several pats and just kind of scatter them around in the pan a little bit. Now we gotta season it up and I'm just using some of that salt, pepper, garlic, that AP seasoning. You could use whatever you like here. Just need a little bump. Then we're gonna add some liquid to it. That's what's gonna help these mushrooms cook down. It's gonna help them braise. It's gonna make them delicious. We're gonna create this nice, rich sauce. First, we've got some Worcestershire and I'm eyeballing it. If I had to guess, about a quarter cup. Then you gotta have some red wine. You need about a cup. Use something you like to drink. Then we've got a little bit of beef broth, about the same amount, about one cup. Pour it right around. You should see the liquid coming up in the pan, but you don't want it just submerged at this point. And last but not least, I'm gonna fortify that flavor with a little bit of beef broth base. But it gives these mushrooms a nice, rich flavor to go with the butter, go with the Worcestershire, go with the wine. Now the mushrooms are going right on the opposite side of the beef tenderloin and they're gonna start cooking down. We'll get the lid closed and we're gonna keep on cooking. So that beef tenderloin's been on the grill about 30 minutes. This is when I wanna start monitoring internal temperature. I've got one of my ThermoWorks Dyed Alarms set for 120 internal. Got our mushrooms cooking down. Beef tenderloin looking good. It's got some beautiful color on it. I'm just going center mass. You want to kind of gauge about how far you need to go. So I'm going in, I'd say about an inch and a half. We're sitting at about 97 internal. So we've come up, but we still got a little ways to go. Check it out, y'all. The ThermoWorks Dot, it's actually bumped up to 121. That's where I wanna take this tenderloin because I know it's gonna carry over. I'm gonna hold it for at least 20, 30 minutes. Beautiful color on the outside. It's gonna be nice and tender. It's still gonna be on the rare side, but it's fixing to carry over to about 125, 126 degrees. I'm gonna watch it. We're just gonna wrap it up in foil. Mushrooms are doing their thing. We're just gonna keep letting them simmer down. Starting to get some good color on them. All that shallot and garlic softening up. We're getting all those flavors from the wine. Let's close the lid on it. Let them keep rolling while we rest this beautiful beef tenderloin. So I just pulled out a sheet of aluminum foil, set the tenderloin right on it. And we have already carried up to 123 degrees. Getting it off at 120 is the ticket. It's gonna keep going. It's nice and warm outside. All I wanna do is tend it up, keep my probe inside the meat. That way I can watch it. It's gonna be about 125 to 127. That's where they always finish. But you want that carry over and we're catching any juice that might wanna settle out. You know I'm gonna use that. Now I let the beef tenderloin hang out here on the cutting board for about 30 minutes. It's carried over to 132 degrees, a little further than I expected. I thought it would go about 127, but hey, it's a hot day. Now we're gonna get it out of the foil and don't throw that juice away. Leave it in the foil. We can serve it over these steaks when we get it cut up. Now, when it comes to carving this bad boy up, I'm cutting it into filet size. You could go as thick or as thin as you want, but I want a nice juicy piece of steak. Now I'm just eyeballing my sizes. It's about an inch and a half, but just let the knife glide right through it. It's so tender, there's no resistance. Now let's pull one of these centerpieces out here. Check this out. You can see the juice in the meat. It's perfectly cooked from edge to edge. That's what smoking it low and slow on that pellet grill does. I can tell it's tender. The knife just fell right through it. This is how I wanna eat beef tenderloin. Perfect filet size, nice and thick, juicy. Now we gotta top it with some of these mushrooms. Now for these mushrooms, all I did was took them off the pit and then poured them up into a serving bowl. Now look at them. They're good right there by themselves. You can eat them with a spoon and go to town, but we're gonna serve them over these pieces of beef tenderloin that we've sliced up. So let me show y'all how we're gonna serve this up. I'm gonna get me a piece of this out. Look at it. It's beautiful, medium rare from edge to edge. That's what doing it nice and slow on that pellet grill does. I wanna top it up with some of these mushrooms that I got off the pit. Just put them in a ramekin here. They've cooked down. Everything's come together in them. I'm just gonna put a little over the top. Go back and get you a little of that juice and let it just run over too because you know that's good for dabbing. But this is what I've been waiting on. Trying this meat. I'm gonna cut it to where I can get me a little piece of that outer edge, that crust on it. I wanna taste those flavors. Inside, perfectly cooked. Little bit of mushroom. How we do. Melts in your mouth. Better than any fillet you could ever cook like that. You get the pepper, you get the garlic, you get the salt, you get those coarse herbs that's in that Saskatchewan rub. I gotta beat these flies to it, y'all. But look at that. That is a thing of beauty. Mm. And y'all, this was perfect for Father's Day or any other special events you got going on. Cook you one of these beef tenderloins. It doesn't take long. Wanna season that outside. I use a little bit of Worcestershire on the outside. AP, Saskatchewan rub, 250 degree pellet grill till that internal temperature hit 120 and we wrapped it up and let it carry over for about 30 minutes. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us today here at How to Barbecue Right. If you like what we're doing, subscribe to the channel. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. Shaw and I'll talk about this beef tenderloin recipe, all the other fun stuff we're doing on our weekly podcast. Y'all give that a listen too. We'll see y'all next time. Kick back, cold beer, perfectly cooked beef tenderloin.