Monday, March 24, 2008

Learning Curve on the Big Green Egg

Well cooking on the Egg has a bit of a learning curve. I over cooked my filets. I was shooting for Medium doneness and got Medium-Well and Well Done steaks. I seared them in a cast iron skillet for 2.5 minutes per side and cooked them at 450 in the Egg but I let them go just a little too long.

For Easter, instead of Prime Rib, we decided to do Stuffed Beef Tenderloin, using a recipe Stephanie learned when she got her culinary degree. The stuffing was mushrooms, bacon, garlic and onion and parsley. I couldn't find a whole beef tenderloin. but I did find some that were cut in half, so I bought two of them.

You put the bacon, onion and garlic in the food processor and get it finely chopped then throw it in a skillet. Then while thats cooking, cut the caps off the mushrooms and put them in the food processor and chop them up nicely. Then add the mushrooms and the parsley to the bacon mixture and cook until all the moisture from the mushrooms has evaporated. Set aside and chill.

Once its chilled, you can butterfly the tenderloin and spread the mushroom mixture. You are then supposed to tie the tenderloin with butcher's twine. We couldn't find butcher's twine at Walmart so we did the next best thing, we wrapped the tenderloin with bacon.

I heated the egg to about 450 degrees and then threw in a bunch of wood chips from Jack Daniel's Oak Aging Barrels for some smoky flavor. I put the tenderloins on the egg to cook them until they were medium in the middle. One of my thermometers wasn't working right and it was registering medium but they were really rare. So I put them back on for about 15 more minutes and they turned out really good.

I also threw some asparagus on the grill too while the tenderloin was finishing up. Stephanie made loaded mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, chocolate eclair cake and banana pudding to go with it. We had a great Easter feast.

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