Buying and Roasting Filet Mignon

Ok, here we go...

So Joan and I were at a wine tasting last night and met a couple (Mike and Vicky) we had met at a wine luncheon in February. The tasting was held by Kreston's Liquors in Wilmington (who we highly recommend BTW) and the tasting was hosted by Alain Blanchon who is one of our all time favorite wine distributors. Alain had Francois Thienpont with him who was the producer of the wine. (Hmmmm, maybe I should do a separate post on this?? Yes, I think I will. (Someone once asked if talking to yourself meant you were crazy. The reply was only if you answered yourself. I think I just answered myself)) (Check out those nested parens math majors!)

So I was describing to Mike the oven roasted filet mignon I served at Christmas Eve. He had never heard of doing this before. He only grilled them and asked me for details on the prep. He asked me where I got my beef and I told him Doc's in Hockessin. (Which is a butcher shop. But you could google that your self) Mike gets his meats from Costco which I had heard had good stuff. Anyway, I emailed Mike my analysis which follows..

As far as the whole fillet goes, here is how I cooked it. I bought a whole filet mignon from Doc's which weighed in at ~7.1 lbs. The butchers at doc's trimmed it down to a final weight of 5.75 lbs.
I had them save some of the trimmings for me so I could make stock.
(I need a post on stock I think. Somebody remind me.)

Doc's gave me a final weight and roasting time of 50 minutes at 425F based on the weight of the cut. As is usual with such cuts, one end is not as thick as the rest of the roast. So I tied the roast to balance the thickness. I usually do this anyway with roasts.

I prepared a paste of fresh ground pepper, garlic, kosher salt and I think Herbes de Provence.
I smeared this all over the filet. My biggest problem was finding something that would hold the whole roast. The pic shows the roast after cooking and is a bit shorter than the uncooked roast.
I have a fairly good set of equipment here, but that had me a little worried. I did fail to take the temperature of the roast after it came out of the oven and after resting. We like beef on the rare side here. (Fish well done, if you please) I think I would have gone 60 minutes in the oven in retrospect. I picked roasting over grilling as we had 12 over for dinner that night and roasting was easier. Believe me, no one complained!




As for Doc's vs. Costco...

I visited Costco a month or two ago to check them out. We had heard from others that they had good stuff at good prices. And frankly, who can ignore good prices nowadays? The thing that concerned me was their meats were not from branded sources. This worried me. Everything was Kirkland brand I think. Except the pork products were from Swift. Swift is a well known pork producer so no issues there.

Now once upon a time I used to go to a local butcher in Avondale. One day I asked him why his london broil was $4 a pound and the Acme's was $2 a pound. He said that Acme bought all of their meats in bulk in order to support timing and distribution of sale ads. Also, in order to be able to sell at the price points their consumers expected, Acme bought from who ever was the low price supplier at the time.

The local butcher bought all of his beef from either one or another supplier out in the mid West. Thus the local guy got a consistent supply of beef that he could always count on as being high quality. And so could the butcher's customers. Eventually, this butcher folded up shop. Which was a real loss because he had some killer beef and lamb chops. However, based on all of this I tend to stick with small local butchers and ask them who their supplier are. I like to support my local independent businessman.

Which brings me back to Costco and Kirkland. If Costco needs to present a certain product at a certain price point they need flexibility in suppliers in order to do so. They are an Acme only on a different scale. Their corporate purchasing criteria is price because that is their customer's purchasing criteria. So a very long winded story short, I did not feel comfortable buying the generic brands from Costco. If I bought their beef once and it was good, could I count on it in the future?

Since this is all speculation on my part and I don't know Costco's actual business practices for sure, we kind of stick with Doc's. If things really start to press, I guess we could try Costco.
But that is my current thinking on the matter.

So, anyway, that's my very first post and I'm stickin to it!