Most states in the US have a sustainable totally grass fed source of tenderloins dancing and prancing around with very few people willing to help themselves to this almost free gift. I’ll get back to this line of thought later. First the recipe and photos.
I read article in the NYT about how to cook a tenderloin. It was so simple I had to try it, and it just happened that I had a tenderloin lying around.
The recipe was simple. Luckily I can translate Westchesterish into English.
You get a tenderloin, do whatever you usually do to good meat before you barbeque or fry. Get a cast iron frying pan pretty hot with some oil in it. Cook the tenderloin so that it gets browned on all sides. Cook the hell out of it but only for a minute or two a side. Then stick the whole thing, frying pan, tenderloin, and aspirations, into the preheated to 400 degrees oven. Take it out when the inside hits 120 and let it sit a while before cutting and eating.
I think the letting it come to room temperature first is to help the meat reach a warmer internal temperature without cooking the bejesus out of the outside. Also allowing it to set after taking it out of the oven is to allow it to coninue cooking as the heat on the outside travels to the inside.
I ate it lightly salted, some of it with ground pepper, other pieces with a squeeze of lime. Ok, I squirted some fish sauce on some too, wasn't half bad, kind of like that nua nom dok the Thai eat.
This tenderloin came from a Wapati, that’s what we call the variety of red deer that lives in North America, most call them elk. Some say elk is the best tasting deer, I wouldn’t know, mule deer tastes good to me and I’ve never had white tail but I hear that’s good too.
Last week I went to Costco, tenderloin cost a hundred bucks, it was about twice as big as that elk. The difference between the tenderloin I ate and that tenderloin in Costco is that my meat used no corn to grow it, and no corn means no petroleum to make the fertilizer to grow the corn, no transport of cow to feedlot and to processor and to the store which cuts it up and puts it in those little shrink wrapped packages.
No growth hormones, no antibiotics, no slaughter house. One day that cow was eating with sixty of her best friends, she heard a loud noise, she looked around and she felt weak and fell over dead. Her falling startled her friends and they ran a couple hundred yards up the hill and continued eating. A hundred and eighty pounds of meat after it was in the freezer in all it’s neat little butcher wrapped paper packages. A forty five dollar license, a couple gallons of diesel, and a two dollar bullet. (100% copper, no lead). Less footprint than a tempe burger topped with kosher salt and that substitute for sour cream called crème fraîche that I can't even pronounce. Freedom fraiche?
Every state has some of this almost free meat. Some states on the east coast have more than they can handle, they’d love for some people to take some of the free meat. For sure there isn’t enough for everybody but so far that hasn’t been a problem most places.