Cutting Beef Tenderloin into Filets

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I do not eat much steak. Ann loves it a lot more than me. It's been over three years and possibly as long as five since I have had a steak. If I'm going to have beef, I'll have a burger or some melt-in-your-mouth shank. It is not that I do not like steak; I do. It is more that I love so many things better than steak that I rarely, if ever, crave it.

These days we are looking to eat low fat and there's no cut of beef lower in fat than tenderloin, which is why if I were ever to order a steak, a filet mignon would be the absolute last cut I would order. No fat equals no flavor. Plus filets have no texture and I want texture in my steak. I know from the restaurant days that I am in the minority; for many, steak means filet and only filet.

For me, of the traditional "high value" steaks, the New York strip, the top loin, would be the choice for its great texture and flavor. But my preference runs to lower value steaks, among which, the flatiron, a cut from the shoulder clod, is my favorite, with the teres major, another shoulder steak, and the hanger steak next.

That aside, beef tenderloin was on an incredible sale at my grocery store. Our store places their special values right in the entrance way and while I sometimes glance at them, I rarely buy them. But when I saw whole tenderloins for $5.89 a pound, the same price as the good hamburger, I about broke my neck doing a double take.

Long story short, I picked one up because it would be great to surprise Annie with her first steak in years. As I put the tenderloin in my cart, the store employee sitting at the door handing out masks to those who "forgot" them, said, "Good man! Those are a screaming deal!" No kidding!

I have no fear of bringing home a whole tenderloin. My restaurant was farm-to-table before that was ever a term and so we did a lot of small animal butchery as well as breaking down the larger sections of the bigger animals. I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of beef tenderloins I have broken down into thousands and thousand of filet steaks, so I'm really comfortable prepping my own steaks.

It's really easy to do and a great way to save a lot of money over buying pre-portioned steaks. For example, I paid 26 dollars for five meals for the two of us: eight 6-ounce filets mignons and two 5-ounce servings of steak tartare. The total cost for each portion of beef is just $2.60.

Mind you, I do not begrudge restaurants the prices that they have to charge for their food; it is a terribly hard business and I lived it for a career. Unlike a restaurant, when looking at my costs for the steaks I cut, I did not factor in my labor, my health insurance, my utilities, my mortgage, and all my other living expenses. I'm not saying do not eat steaks out; to the contrary, eating out helps keep our economy ticking. Rather, I am saying, if you're going to cook your own steaks at home, you might as well save a lot of money but cutting your own.

Here's a step-by-step photo essay on breaking down a beef tenderloin into filets mignons.

Whole Tenderloin, Minus the Chain

I'm used to entire tenderloins which as traditionally packed consist of three muscles. They are the tenderloin proper, the psoas major, the chain that runs alongside, the psoas minor, and the heel, the iliacus. We referred to these in the trade as PSMOs (Peeled, Side Muscle On) pronounced pizz-moes, like Pismo Beach, CA. We also called them 189As after the North American Meat Processors code for the cut. This tenderloin would go by code 190 because the side muscle (the chain, the psoas minor) is absent.

If your tenderloin has a chain, you'll see a very long thin piece of meat running alongside the tenderloin. Grab it with your hands and pull it off. The chain usually has long sinewy pieces running through it, but if you can pull them out, you have a really nice little chef snack to throw on the grill. I generally cleaned the chains and ground them for various uses.

The heel, the iliacus, is not really all that well visible in this photo, but you can see part of it sticking out near the butt of my knife. Dealing with the heel is the only tricky part of cutting tenderloins and we'll get to that later on.

You Need a Good Knife

The only catch in cutting steaks is that you need a good knife, but chances are, if you are looking to break down a tenderloin, you already own a decent knife. Whatever works for you, works for you, but a knife with a flexible blade will work best. I have used an inflexible chef's knife, but I don't recommend it. The upper knife on the cutting board is my boning knife, and the one I prefer for working with meat, while the lower one is my slicer, which I prefer for skinning and portioning fish. Either would work fine for prepping a tenderloin.

If you are serious about cooking, knives are a lifetime investment. I have had the boning knife about 40 years while the slicer is a relative newcomer to my kit at 30 years old. They both served me well at the restaurant. Good knives don't come cheap: to replace these two would be every bit of $250. Notice that they are both from different makers. When I bought a knife, I found the very best one that fit my hand, regardless of the maker. I don't subscribe to buying kits of knives and so I have knives from probably ten different makers, each selected for a specific function.

Start by Removing the Silverskin

In the photo above, you can see that the tenderloin is covered in an extremely tough sheath of silverskin. At any place that feels comfortable to you, slide the tip of your knife between the tenderloin and the silverskin. Then push the knife back through the silverskin so that you can remove it in strips.

Remove the Silverskin Strip by Strip

Until the Tenderloin is Cleaned

Tilting the knife blade up against the silverskin, so that you do not cut down into good steak, remove the silverskin strip by strip until the tenderloin is clean. You may have to remove some fat as well. In the photo above, you can see the pile of scrap at the top. Remember that scrap for it will become an awesome sauce for our steaks in another post. In other words, when butchering meat, never throw out anything without repurposing it first.

You also have a very clear view of the heel on the left side of this photo. My knife is lying beside the barrel of the tenderloin, also known as the chateaubriand. This is where the best center-cut steaks will come from.

Cut out the Center Steaks

I opted to cut 6-ounce steaks and I got four nice ones as you see in the photo above. Next, you have to decide what to do with the heel and the tail of the tenderloin. I decided to take one more steak out of heel end, for a total of five steaks.

The Upper Section of the Tail

The remaining part of the tail is too narrow by half to make a decent steak, but if you double that piece up, you can get a decent serving. This wouldn't be served as a premium steak in a restaurant, unless perhaps somebody ordered a well done filet, in which case all bets are off. But at home, you're not being judged on perfection and a doubled-up steak makes good sense. To start making the doubled-up steak, I cut a section of the tail that is twice as long as the other steaks are tall.

Split the Steak Almost in Half

You can either cut this piece in half and tie the two halves together or you can do as I have done here and cut the steak almost in half.

Fold the Two Halves Together

Now you can fold the two halves (still joined by a small flap of meat) down to form a steak the same size as the center-cut steaks. You'll want to tie this steak with a string to keep it together while cooking.

Leftovers: Heel (left) and Tail (right)

The heel section is trickier. The end where it joins the carcass will have more silverskin that you will need to remove. Depending on the tenderloin, it is usually possible, once all the silverskin is removed, to cut one or two more steaks that include part of the tenderloin and part of the heel. I got two more steaks, numbers seven and eight.

Heel and Tail End Steaks, Tied

You'll want to tie these half tenderloin-half heel steaks so that they keep their form while cooking and don't end up all ugly looking. These aren't your prime steaks in terms of looks, but they eat just fine.

Packaged for the Freezer

I kept the two prettiest steaks out for dinner, along with all the trim for steak tartare the following day. After wrapping the steaks for the freezer, I weighed them. My goal was to cut 6-ounce steaks. The two for dinner weighed 12.2 ounces and if you can read the writing on the packages above, the other three packages weighed 12.5, 12.2, and 12.2 ounces each. Despite my eyeballing each cut, I was able to be this consistent because of a lifetime of portioning meat. The welfare of my restaurant and its employees depended on that consistency. Don't expect to be this close; your ability to pay your mortgage does not depend on portion size!