Smoked beef tenderloin the Lopez Island way -- hot and fast

Editor's note: Posse members not only love to eat barbecue but they also love to cook. Bryan Gooding, who recently retired and moved from Dallas to Lopez Island in Washington state, shares his secrets for smoking great tenderloin.


By Bryan Gooding

Though I love to barbecue meats you can’t treat a beef tenderloin like a brisket or pork butt. The smoking needs to be hot and fast since there isn’t enough fat on a tenderloin to survive a long time in low heat.

So I use my smoker with a lot of heat from a wood fire. In this case I used apple wood but you could get a nice spicy taste from mesquite or a soft buttery smoke from pecan.

Since this is fast you don’t need to worry about over-smoking the meat so you can avoid wrapping in paper.

Making the rub, from start to
finish. (Photos ©Bryan Gooding)

To make the rub, pulse chopped shallots and garlic in a small food processor to a smooth mince. Crush the coriander seeds and peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. Add the brown sugar, crushed coriander/black pepper mixture and salt to the food processor and blend together.

Slather a thick coat of the rub all over your tenderloin and let it marinate in the refrigerator uncovered for at least three hours but not more than five. Before cooking, set the tenderloin out and allow it to come to room temperature about an hour before cooking.

Have your smoker up to 400 degrees.  Start the fire with charcoal (always use a chimney with newspaper because that charcoal lighter fluid crap is not good for you), add your wood and let the charcoal burn away so you have a nice hot wood fire.

Set the tenderloin on the grill as close to the firebox as possible without letting the flames lick the meat. Place the thick end of the meat towards the fire.

I set my meat thermometer, centered, in the thickest part of the tenderloin. I started out at about 45 degrees internal temperature on the meat. Close up the smoker and try to keep the temp at 400 degrees (adding wood as necessary).

I found that a fire that hot needs more air than the fire box vents allow so I cracked the door to give sufficient air.

I pulled the meat once the internal temp hit 130 degrees (this took about 40 minutes during this cook) and double wrapped it in foil and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes before slicing into thick pieces.

The beef tenderloin is a perfect meat for a group meal as you get the whole range from rare to done. Cut your more done meat from the small end and rarer cuts from the thick end. I find the combination of the smoke, shallots, and coriander spice gives you an unusual flavor pallet to what can be otherwise a fairly plain-jane cut of meat.

We serve ours with a sauce made with creamed horseradish combined with sour cream and a little salt.

The recipes

Rub
2 Tbsp. coriander seeds
2 Tbsp. black peppercorns
3 large shallots, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
¾ cup Kosher salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1 beef tenderloin, trimmed (about 4 lbs)

Fire
Some charcoal for starting your wood fire (unless you have a better way)
Plenty of good smoking wood – pecan, cherry, oak, mesquite, apple or whatever is handy in your area

Sauce
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup horseradish
salt to taste

How to put some smoke on your prime rib roast before using the 500-degree reverse sear

The Gagne's prime rib roast ready for carving. (Photo ©Texas BBQ Posse)

Warning: This isn't a normal Posse blog post. Just how atypical? I had to look up how to spell sous vide.

But don't worry, that vacuum-sealed cooking method was used only for warming up some wonderful leftovers from the meal that long-time Posse member Mike Gagne cooked on Christmas Day.

Mike is a University of Texas law school grad and serious Longhorns fan, so when we (Mike is married to my daughter, Libby) decided to cook prime rib for the holiday, he went right to the source of all knowledge -- Orangebloods.com.

He quickly found a long thread on the subject that mentioned a Serious Eats article by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. For the juiciest prime rib, Lopez-Alt argues, start low on temperature and go slow on cooking, then finish very hot with what he calls a reverse sear. Everything is done in an oven.

That's when Mike's Posse background took over.

"It's not us if we don't put some smoke on it," he said.

Mike's cooking variation started the roast, which had just a salt and pepper rub, on a Weber kettle. The Weber was set up offset, with charcoal and pecan wood chips. Mike wanted a light smoke flavor so he let the meat cook for 30 minutes at about 250 degrees.

Then the roast, which weighed about 12 pounds or so, was transferred to an oven, pre-heated to about 230 degrees. The roast stayed there until its internal temp was about 130 degrees, which took about 2 1/2 hours.

Now the hard part. Be patient. Mike took the roast out of the oven and let it rest, covered by foil, for about an hour. He then kicked the oven up to 500 degrees and put the meat back in for another 20 minutes or so.

That final sear produced a beautiful looking, juicy, smoke-flavored rib roast. He served it with a mild horseradish sauce.

The next day, we ate the leftovers re-heated in a warm water bath sous-vide style. The meat was just as tender as Day One. This could become a family Christmas tradition.

Mike Gagne carves up the finished rib roast. (Photo ©Texas BBQ Posse)

Warming leftovers sous-vide style, the meat was just as tender as Day One. (Photo ©Texas BBQ Posse)

My crash course in smoking with the Knights of Columbus

Tom Rossman loads the pit with pork butts.

This weekend I had the pleasure of hanging out with my dad Tom Rossman and the Knights of Columbus Council 6950 in Katy for a full day of smoking meat.

Several times each year the Knights sell barbecue as a fund-raiser. They presell briskets, ribs and pork butts, cook on Friday and customers pickup on Saturday. This time they prepared 42 briskets, 75 racks of ribs and 12 pork butts.

Unlocking at least one secret to what makes Fargo's Pit BBQ so good

Alan Caldwell, owner and pitmaster at Fargo's Pit BBQ in Bryan, has been very protective of the cooking secrets that help make his joint one of the top two or three in Texas.

In the past, he has refused to tell the Posse and BBQ Snob Daniel Vaughn the kind of pit he uses or the kind of wood he burns.

"You still refusing to show anyone your pit?" he was asked during our weekend barbecue tour that covered 700 miles and took us to the Texas Gulf Coast.

"That's my secret," he said. "Let's talk about something else."

After we had eaten and Caldwell came out from behind the counter to talk, he seemed to mellow a bit.

He said he cooks with a brick pit that he had built on site.

"I like it because it will just seal in that flavor," Caldwell said of his smoker.

And, without being specific, he said he uses a mixture of wood.

Before we drove to our next stop, we did sneak a look through a gap in his fence. Outside his smokehouse was a big stack of oak.

Was that for real? Or, just a prop to fool BBQ snoops like us?

Only Caldwell knows for sure.


Photos ©Jim Rossman, bottom, & Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse