Porcini and Rosemary Crusted Beef Tenderloin with Port Wine Sauce




A 3-pound center-cut beef tenderloin (all trussed up), shallot, rosemary, red wine (and port), dried porcini, black peppercorns, butter. Yes.

Salting 4-24 hours ahead seasons the meat all the way through and gives it a great crust. We used 1 1/4 teaspoons of Diamond kosher salt for 3 pounds of beef.

Dried porcinis are ready to be blitzed in the food processor (or spice grinder). Make sure yours are completely dry and brittle, or they won't willingly grind into powder. If they're at all...

Next to the stage: rosemary.

And black peppercorns. Time to get our spice rub on.

Rubbed and ready.

Heat up a heavy skillet to sear your roast -- you'll make your pan sauce in it later too.

Once the olive oil is nice and hot, set your roast in to brown for a few minutes on each side. Have patience and don't fuss with it till a nice brown crust is forming.

Turn!

TasteFood has you transfer your beef to a separate roasting pan to finish cooking through in the oven, to keep the brown bits pristine for the pan sauce. Don't wash those bits away yet!

While your beef roasts away, plump up more dried porcinis in just boiled water.

Then strain.

And chop.

Brown bits return for pan sauce duty, butter starts the party.

Shallots, lots of shallots, will soften the edges of the red wine sauce.

We actually measured this cup of red wine, we swear. And we didn't even drink any (yet).

Deglaze that pan: scraping the bubbling wine around frees the brown bits from the bottom and enriches the sauce.

Next, simmer the sauce to reduce and thicken it up, concentrating the flavors.

A final swirl of butter to round out the sauce, and it's time to feast! (Do this only once your beef has rested and is ready to carve.)

Ready to carve, indeed.
Author Notes: This roast is worth celebrating. Dried porcini mushrooms are blitzed to a powder with fresh rosemary sprigs, creating an umami-rich crust for beef. It's stand alone good, but when served with a port wine reduction infused with rosemary and porcini, it becomes an elegant dinner worthy of any holiday celebration. If you have the time, salt the meat well in advance. This will ensure juicy results and a crispy crust. I used a combination of port and red wine for the sauce. The red wine may be substituted with additional port. —TasteFood
Food52 Review: TasteFood's roast is definitely a show-stopper. Salting and drying the meat in the fridge overnight ensures perfect seasoning, a lovely internal texture and a beautiful crust. The porcini rosemary rub smelled so intense that we were hesitant to use all of it on the meat, but we did and found the flavors mellowed nicely in the oven. We trussed our tenderloin, and you may want to as well for the best results. The rich, winey sauce gains an earthy depth from the additional porcini, and while it may be a thinner gravy than you're used to (to us, it's perfect), it is certainly not lacking in flavor. - A&M —The Editors
Serves 6-8
For the Beef Tenderloin:
-
1
center-cut beef tenderloin, 3 pounds
-
Salt
-
1
ounce dried porcini mushrooms
-
2
tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, finely chopped
-
1
teaspoon black peppercorns
-
Olive oil
- Season the tenderloin all over with salt. Refrigerate 4 hours or up to 24 hours. Thirty minutes before roasting remove beef from refrigerator.
- Preheat oven to 400 F. Combine mushrooms, rosemary and peppercorns in spice grinder. Grind to a coarse powder. Rub beef with olive oil. Coat all over with porcini rosemary rub. (Note: Make sure your mushrooms are completely dry and brittle, or they won't willingly grind into powder. If they're at all pliant, you can dry them out in the oven until they break easily.)
- Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add beef and brown on all sides, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a roasting pan. Roast in oven until thermometer inserted in thickest part reads 125 F., about 30 minutes, for medium rare. Remove from oven and transfer to a cutting board. Tent with foil and let stand for 15 minutes.
- Carve beef in 1/4 inch slices. Serve with Port Wine Sauce.
For the Port Wine Sauce:
-
1/2
ounce dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in 3/4 cup water, liquid reserved
-
3
tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
-
1
medium shallot, finely chopped
-
1
cup port wine
-
1
cup heavy bodied red wine
-
2
rosemary sprigs
-
1/2
teaspoon salt, or to taste
- Strain the porcini water through an un-bleached paper towel into a small bowl. Reserve strained liquid. Coarsely chop porcini.
- Using the same skillet from browning the meat, add 1 tablespoon butter, shallots and chopped porcini. Sauté over medium heat until shallots are translucent, about 2 minutes.
- Add port wine, scraping up any brown bits in the pan. Add red wine, mushroom stock and rosemary. Bring to a boil and cook uncovered until sauce is reduced by about half to approximately 1 1/2 cups. Add salt and taste for seasoning. Strain through a fine-meshed seive into a small saucepan, pressing firmly on solids. Discard solids.
- Heat sauce over medium heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Keep warm until serving.
- Your Best Holiday Roast Contest Winner!
Showing out of comments
about 2 months ago Mark Perino
Iv'e made this a few times and one of those times it was underwhelming as Dan aluded to. Here's my 2c. My best resuts were with really good dried mushrooms, no port and only a very jammy red wine. The mushrooms need to smell strongly of mushrooms. If you use a drier red, or less fragrant mushroom it's a thin sauce, and pretty much rosemary beef.
Goes perfectly with sousvide carrots in lemon butter.
about 2 months ago Dan
I know. That's why I was so bummed. Sorry, I followed the recipe figuring if I wanted to add my touch I would do it after staying tight with the original. My wife and I were just disappointed. I've never posted a complaint on the web before, I didn't mean to offend anyone.
about 2 months ago Dan
I've owned restaurants for 34 years. I recently had surgery and lots of friends brought us multiple meals. I thought this looked like an interesting recipe right.? What's not to like, beef tenderloin, mushrooms, wine, shallots. I read the reviews and was pretty excited to try it. Well I made it tonight as a test run before having 14 guests for a thank you dinner. I thought it was pretty bad.will definitely not make this again. I'm so glad I had a test run before I embarrassed myself in front of our close friends.
about 2 months ago akrainey
I’m so sorry you didn’t like this dish as much as many of us did. Like you, many of us are experienced cooks, some at home and some professionally. I urge you to re-read some of the comments (including mine) and try it again.
4 months ago marianne.bush
While the sauce for this recipe is outstanding it got even better when I decided to throw in two other leftover sauces from the fridge - i.e. a mushroom cream sauce and a blue cheese sauce. Holy cow! I don't think I've ever tasted a better combo. Hope I'll remember sometime in the future.
4 months ago Kym
I have beautiful dried, local foraged Morel mushrooms on hand. Can I substitute these for the Porchini?
4 months ago yiase
Just did a test run and, while the meat received well reviews, the sauce was said to be "ho-hum". I'm not sure if I did something wrong (followed recipe to a 'T') as it was a bit on the thin side. Any suggestions?
5 months ago Megan James
Can you substitute the beef with lamb?
5 months ago TasteFood
Absolutely!
6 months ago Nicole Marie Christner
2 questions: When you salt and refrigerate overnight, do you cover with film, or do you leave it to air dry in fridge? Do you need to rinse when taking it out of fridge before rub?
Also, can I sear it at noon and wait until 6pm to put it in oven?
Thank you!!!
about 1 year ago jadebridgesauce
How Do You Control The Time When You Grill It
over 1 year ago akrainey
I made this amazing dish for NYE with two significant changes: I slow roasted it at 225 degrees for about 2 hours. It came out so perfect - with the porcini topping nicely crusted - that I didn't do a "reverse sear at the end, as I had planned to do!
over 1 year ago Erin Black
I made this for Christmas Eve dinner, and it was absolutely DELICIOUS! I doubled the recipe, but would caution not to double the sauce portion, there would have been plenty of sauce had I not doubled it. Our 6.5 lb roast was far too large for any pan I had available for searing, so we ended up searing the roast over a charcoal grill and then popped it in the oven. Worked like a charm!
over 1 year ago THEToughCookie
Cathy Barrow (MrsWheelbarrow) suggested I use this recipe for a roast I wanted to do for Christmas day. I was a little less than enthusiastic, only because I'm not a mushroom lover. However, since the porcinis were powdered on the roast, and the chopped pieces were strained out of the sauce, I gave it a go. I believe it's the best roast I've ever made. Foolproof instructions, flavor that brought the house down. Thank you, thank you, TasteFood. Absolutely brilliant.
over 1 year ago TasteFood
You're welcome, Gail. Thank you for the comment - I am so happy you tried it - and liked it! Happy New Year!
over 1 year ago Byron Ling
If you don't have a port wine, any reasonable substitutes?
over 1 year ago PamCap 2109
A nice red wine works well. Make sure it's a bold red
over 1 year ago TasteFood
Yes, a bold red, and a full bodied jammy wine such as Zinfandel will work well.
over 1 year ago tastysweet
I am making this for our Xmas(Hannukah) dinner. My question is about how long does it take for the port wine to reduce?
Also if the mushrooms are dried why would there be moisture on them?
I always cook my roasts to 120° never fails. Looking forward to eating this one. Hope you will be reading this soon!
over 1 year ago tastysweet
I did make this for Xmas dinner. My roast was a tad larger at 3.5 LB. I cooked it for the same amount of time, as when. Checked after 30 minutes the temp was just a bit more than 120°. However it was perfect. The sauce was out of this world delicious. I did have to dry out the porcini's in the oven for about 8 to 10 minutes. Thank you for letting us share this recipe.
Happy New Year.
over 1 year ago ninajean9
What kind of Port do you use? I have never used Port. Thank you in advance!
over 1 year ago PamCap 2109
You can grab a tawny port no need to get a high end port.
over 2 years ago Rebecca
Forget it. Of course u can't, is the answer!!
over 2 years ago marianne.bush
Actually, if you look through the comments, Rebecca, you'll see somebody asking that same question and here was the reply: "Yes you can, except you won't be able to incorporate the flavorful brown bits from the meat if you do this. If you do make the sauce in advance, do not proceed with step 4 until serving time"
over 2 years ago Rebecca
Can u make the sauce in advance?
over 2 years ago Abra Bennett
I assume this recipe calls for tawny, as opposed to (the much sweeter) ruby Port. Is that correct?
over 2 years ago Danette Riddle
Made this last night - everyone loved it. The cooking time was definitely not long enough - at 30 minutes, my roast was beyond rare. still moo-ing. I cooked it probably double the amount of time noted (at least, but i was also cooking 4 lbs. not 3. My oven may have heating issues, though - i suspect it's time for a new stove. I would definitely go by the thermometer and how the meat feels and looks. I'd say my cooking time was closer to double what is written. Rave reviews and I thought it was really really good - i'll make it again. At $33/pound, this is not a cheap dish - it's special and well worth it if you can afford it. I did salt the meat the day before - I wouldn't say I crusted it in salt - more of a liberal seasoning. I probably could have done a bit heavier salting in retrospect. The port wine sauce was yummy and I made it exactly as written - in fact, no mods to the recipe at all other than the cooking time on the roast(s).
over 2 years ago Wade Moss
who is the manufacturer of the pan? I want one!
Showing 28 out of 170 comments