Success! I made decent tenderloin (one with a honey/lime glaze, one with a maple syrup/garlic), and more importantly, I did it on a grill. My grill technique is admittedly pretty bad. However, I felt like I had all the conditions right and the end product seemed to confirm. For this novice, that was two moving targets hit.
Anyone think it's unusual that now that MLB is watching for grip enhancing substances, Shoemaker goes two full innings (with baserunner starting at second, even) and gives up no hits and no runs?
My only thought was if they're going to lose in extras it's not so horrible to have a guy who can eat innings and save a couple of arms for another day. So I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.
Minor Details has been posted.
My grill has been out of commission. I went to clean it and install replacement parts, of course to discover upon further inspection that the pan under the grill box was pretty much rusted out. Bad news/good news...return parts, have to buy new grill instead. Shucks. 😉
That happened to me so I was forced to do this.
That's a tough turn....
I should add that I did it on a basic charcoal grill with hardwood and a bit of cherry. I'm really bad with how/when I heat things on a grill, so I was happy to pull off two relatively decent hunks of meat to just the right temperature.
I almost always choose to cook indirectly on the grill by either using one burner in the outdoor oven or piling the coals in one part of the Weber. This arrangement gives max control and wiggle room and then allows you to uncover the coals an crank up the heat to sear the finished product at the end. This runs counter to the sear first and then being to temp ethos popular on the webs but I’m pretty confident the results don’t lie.
I do this, too. I am not the world's best cook, but I feel like this gives me the best control over the end product. One of the best pieces of advice I heard on cooking is that (within reason of course) it's usually easier to cook slowly than it is to cook quickly, because it requires less precision with timing and such, and you have more chances to course correct as you go.
So starting low, I can feel confident that the whole hunk of meat or whatever gets up to the proper temp, checking as I go along, then I can do the tasty/crusty part at the end, and if it gets to temp a little before I have the perfect crust, oh well, it's a better compromise than having to overcook (and dry out) the outer portion of the meat while I wait for the inside to get to temp, which seemed to happen to me a lot when I did the sear first.
I do make an exception for InstantPot/CrockPot cooking. There I'll generally sear first just for convenience because it's a "wet heat" method and starting with the tasty bits in the pot seems to sometimes help with the sauce, and typically the point isn't to produce an end product with a dry crust.
the Reverse Sear is a well-recognized strategy. I don't do it often, Because Weber and Charcoal. It takes a bit more fire management to start slow, then crank up the heat to finish, even with a "hot side, cool side" arrangement.
For steaks and chops, I have taken to the frequent-flip technique, whether on the grill or in a cast iron pan. 30-60 seconds, then flip. Meat cooks evenly despite super-hot temps, and you can get good crust development. But you don't get the pretty grill marks you can achieve with one flip (or a cook, rotate 90 and cook, flip and cook, rotate 90 and finish strategy)
I just love it where when I am taking the meat and veggies off the grill and it seems like it is now at the perfect temperature.
Nothing wrong with a basic charcoal grill. I am a big fan of Meathead's "Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling" book. As with most pop food science stuff, I'm sure that the science part of it is more like "science", in that the technique explanations may or may not correctly address why it works, but I think he approaches the topic with an open mind and willingness to try different approaches and see what works best. For me, it struck a good balance between spending enough time on details of how to set up your grill and what works well, and not putting in a billion recipes to pad the page count.
It also seems to be in line with a lot of what I would call the "new conventional wisdom" that meat was talking about in terms of cooking low first and then finishing with high heat (though even Meathead has a couple specific exceptions to this, generally if you are cooking something really thin) -- I feel like for the most part this method is also endorsed by Alton Brown, Serious Eats, and is more or less the whole philosophy behind sous vide.
apropos of the OP on tenderloin (beef or pork), I think meat addressed this previously. That's a hard cut to do properly because it is so lean. I think it benefits tremendously from the two-zone approach, whether you sear-then-slow or slow-then-sear.
I did the former, though I see meat's point on the latter.
Men's Olympic basketball roster:
That's more than enough talent, if anyone cares about Olympic hoops this year.
Is everyone excited for the Wolves annual playoff appearance?
No championship this year.
Good gravy, the refs are absolutely killing the end of this LAC-PHX game.
But holy crap did Crowder and Ayton salvage it!
That was phenomenal.
moved to today's COC.