Binging with Babish Chateaubriand Steak from The Matrix

Do we have a deal, Mr. Reagan? You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week we are wrangling a whole beef tenderloin. At least that's what I think it looks like Cypher is eating in that fancy harp-infested restaurant. Now this particular whole tenderloin has been trimmed and tied by my butcher, but I'm going to remove the ties and cut it into three pieces so I can show you how to prepare it three different ways. Not to mention, show you how to truss a whole roast. First, we're going to tie a knot on a loop at the end of our roast, and then begin making a loop with the string like that, slipping it underneath the bottom of the roast to your next desired anchor point and pulling tight. Why truss a roast? Well, as you can see, it's a little misshapen and trussing it helps even out the overall width of the meat, helping it cook more evenly. Now I'm going to go ahead and cut this into two roasts and one single filet mignon. This way we can try out a couple different cooking techniques. First, we have to finish trussing our roast. We're going to do that by pulling the twine underneath the roast, cutting it, and beginning to thread it under the bottom side of all the loops that we tied earlier. Pull the whole thing nice and tight, and then at the end of the roast, we've got the original string from the beginning of the process that we're going to simply tie together with the bottom string. And there you have it, a lovely little package of beef, ready to be hand-delivered to your mouth. So we've got our trussed, thicker, sort of oblong roast here. We'll try reverse searing that. And then we've got the center-cut roast, which is a lot more consistent in its shape, and therefore doesn't really need to be trussed. And then if you don't feel like spending $120 on a roast, you've got our single filet, all of which we're going to salt liberally with kosher salt, some fresh ground pepper. We're going to place on a rack and refrigerate overnight to help desiccate the exterior and give us a better crust down the line. Steak day, 24 hours later, and the exterior of our roasts are significantly drier. This is going to help us get better browning and better flavor. Also, I'm going to truss this other roast because I learned a quick and easy technique last night in my jammies. We're simply going to wrap the twine lengthwise around the roast and then begin wrapping the roast widthwise in a spiral, thus a bit more quickly and easily wrapping up and evening out the shape of our beef. Once you've got the whole thing wrapped, just cut the string, tie a little knot, and boom, easy as pie. Or beef. Easy as beef. Trademark. 2018. Babish Enterprises. Alright, so let's start off with our traditional sear and roast technique. I'm heating some vegetable oil in a stainless steel roaster until it just starts to smoke and then dropping our beef inside. Let it sit for a solid two or three minutes because we want to develop some good color on the outside of this roast. I feel like I'm saying roast too much. From now on, I'm going to call this Julio. We're going to insert our probe into Julio. Okay, never mind, we're not going to call it Julio. Insert our probe into the roast and get it into a 450°F oven. In the meantime, I have microwaved some cipollini onions for one minute. I'm now going to toss them with a little bit of vegetable oil and then dump them onto a preheated baking sheet so we can get some brown going right away. This is going to make a nice little topping for our steak. Throw these back in the oven, roast for a few minutes, flip once they get a little bit of color on them, and try not to eat them all before your steak even comes out of the oven. This guy is sitting at 114°F internal. It has a lovely brown crust. Sorry, I'm getting excited. Optionally, you can make good use of the fond at the bottom of this pan. Drop in some grated shallots, some chicken stock, some red wine. Boil it down to a syrupy consistency. Turn off the heat and add a nice pat of butter. Whisk until you have yourself a lovely little pan sauce. Then set that aside because Julio's been waiting for ten minutes to be untied. So it's time to slice him open and see if we did our job right. There we go. Perfect, medium-rare Julio. But as you can see, the traditional sear and roast technique causes a pretty huge gradation from medium-rare to well-done towards the outside edge. And sure, it looks very pretty all plated up and tastes great. For this next roast, we're going to try reverse searing. That is, inserting our temperature probe into, let's call him Troy, and placing him in a 225°F oven for two to three hours or until Troy also reaches an internal temperature of 115°F. Then we are going to sear the exterior, hence the name reverse sear. And then we've got this nice fond on the bottom of the pot, so let's make a little bit of mushroom sauce. I'm just tossing in a few mushrooms, sautéing them, adding some thyme, some crushed garlic, and then deglazing with some sherry and some chicken stock, letting that reduce to a syrupy consistency, turning off the heat, and adding a pat of butter. Whisking until well combined. And again, setting aside because it's time to carve. Let's see how Troy's looking. Rosy, medium-rare, edge to edge. You can see that there is barely any gradation in doneness. Now, it looked like Seifer was eating one huge hunk of roast, so that's how I'm going to serve it. Won't hear me complaining about eating a whole half of a Chateaubriand. And don't forget to garnish with parsley, just like in the movie. Then wax poetic about how we all might be living in a simulation before digging in and enjoying. Now, sure, this roast cooked much more evenly, but I kind of like a little variety in the chew of different bites of my tenderloin, so let's try the Gordon Ramsay straight-up pan-seared filet mignon. After we've formed a nice crust on both sides of the filet, we're going to add a garlic clove, a little bit of thyme, and a little bit of chicken stock. Reduce the heat and let the steak come up to temp while we prepare our gremolata, which is simply about equal parts of chopped parsley, capers, and lemon zest. Then my man Gordon slices the beef across the grain, which is a good idea. Seasons with a healthy sprinkling of gremolata, and then spoons a bit of the sauce from the pan around the steak along with a good drizzle of olive oil. Huh, looks pretty good. That Gordon Ramsay guy really knows what he's doing. And sure, it's got that little gradient from medium-rare to well-done, but, again, that's what I like. Now, I ate this thing off-camera, so you're just going to have to trust me when I say that it entered the clean plate club.