Louisville Restaurants Forum

I'm making Julia Child's Beef Bourgoignon this weekend ( one of my all-time favorite recipes). But when I went to pull the 3 lb chuck/rump roast out of the freezer, I found I'd already used it. I do however have 3 lbs of beef tenderloin that's older and a tiny bit freezer- burned. Normally there is no way I'd use an expensive cut for something like this, but I'm wondering if it's a good way to use up the tenderloin. Julia's instructions call for using a " lean cut of beef" and include sirloin tip amongst the possibilities.

Do you I think I can get away with using the tenderloin for this long-cooking dish? Or is it just too lean?

Thanks,
Deb

So the answer I got on-line: " long cooking beef tenderloin results in stringy and tasteless meat...." ( oh yum! ).

I found a Jacque Pepin recipe for Instant Beef Stew , made from tenderloin. We will be going with that.

Deb

Deb Hall wrote:So the answer I got on-line: " long cooking beef tenderloin results in stringy and tasteless meat...." ( oh yum! ).

I found a Jacque Pepin recipe for Instant Beef Stew , made from tenderloin. We will be going with that.

Deb

An alternative might be to sear the beef at the beginning to get the caramelized meat favors into the dish; pull the meat and reserve it, cook the rest of the dish and then put the seared tenderloin back in at the end?

Great idea, Robin- but the Julia child recipe cooks for over 3 hours with the meat in it, the seared beef tenderloin would be at high temp, then have to be refrigerated for hours awaiting the sauce to be safe. I think it'd be hard to get it back to temp without it overcooking in the sauce.
I'm thinking of doing the same thing but with beef bones- I roasted them as though for brown stock, then I'm going to add the rest of the ingredients except the beef and cook for a while. That'll get me the caramelized meat flavor in there. Then separately pan sear the tenderloin cubes when everything else is ready. We'll see what I decide: I'm still liking this idea better than the Pepin recipe idea and I'd already browned the bones before realizing I had the wrong meat..

Thanks!
Deb