How to Reheat Beef Tenderloin Without Ruining It: 3 Best Ways

When you make beef tenderloin at home, you always want to ensure it tastes just as good on the second or third day as it did on the first. 

Therefore, three factors- appropriate temperature, warming time, and maintaining moisture – are essential to reheating the steak. Using a microwave is possible, but you need to know the special tricks to prevent it from being rubbery and chewy. 

Rather than hurrying and destroying your leftover steak, take your time and read this article to learn the best ways to reheat beef tenderloin so that your family enjoys this dish as much today as they did yesterday.

Why Reheating Beef Tenderloin Perfectly is Crucial?

Beef tenderloin, fancily called Filet mignon, is the most expensive cut when it comes to steak. Why? Because the meat comes with little to no connective tissues and not the weight-bearing muscle of a cow. 

The fine-cut piece is then cooked in high flame to get the brown crisp while keeping the inner meat rare to medium rare with dark pink meat. Since the meat is tender, it is easy to overcook it while reheating. 

Moreover, preparing or making ahead beef tenderloin is a common practice in many households since it is a special occasion dish. If needed, one can prepare the beef a day or night before an event and reheat following the instructions recommended by professionals. 

So, where will you get the instructions? Keep scrolling, and you will know everything about reheating beef tenderloin from storage to your plate. 

How to Store Cooked Beef Tenderloin?

Before moving on to how to reheat beef tenderloin, let us tell you how to store the cooked steak correctly. If not stored ideally, the reheated beef will not be able to retain its freshness when warm again. 

To store the steak, cool it down to room temperature first and wrap it with a plastic wrapper. 

After that, keep it in the refrigerator in an airtight container. The plastic wrap and airtight container will trap the meat’s moisture and keep it fresh. 

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How to Reheat Beef Tenderloin Without Overcooking?

Well, who doesn’t want to have the heavenly taste of leftover beef tenderloin the next day for dinner? Of course, everyone.

But when it comes to reheating a refrigerated steak, it never tastes the same because most people don’t know how to keep the meat as rare or medium rare as it is and keep the moisture intact. 

Therefore, after hundreds of experiments and failed attempts, the professional chefs and cooks recommended the following methods:

1. Reheating in the oven and skillet: retained flavor and texture
2. Warming using sous vide technique: makes the steak juicy again
3. In the microwave: time-saving but risky 

Remember, you need to keep the temperature high enough so the meat only gets warm. If you reheat the beef at a high temperature, the cooking process will start again, and the meat will be overcooked, losing all the juice and texture. 

Here are the steps to warm up your food and make it delicious again. 

Method 1: How to reheat beef tenderloin using oven and skillet

If you have cooked the beef using both oven and skillet to make it cook medium rare inside and brown crust outside, you can repeat the cooking process when reheating. This extra effort is worth it if you have enough time to prepare dinner. 

Follow these simple steps, and you’ll have delicious, juicy beef tenderloin every time.

Step 1: Take the meat from the freezer and set it for 30 to 45 minutes. It will help the congealed fat break down again.

Step 2: Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. It is the proper beef tenderloin temperature to warm up your steak.

Step 3: Put the steaks on a wire rack and put another tray with a baking sheet below the shelf. Wait up to 30 minutes depending on the thickness of the steak. It will take less time to warm up the meat for thinner ones. 

Step 4: You can check with a thermometer if the inner temperature has risen to 110 degrees. Or you can stick a knife at the center of the steak and see if it’s warm enough.

Step 5: Take the stakes out of the oven and dry them with a paper towel. 

Step 6: Heat a couple of teaspoons of vegetable oil and a skillet or frying pan and switch on the stove to high heat. Wait until it starts to smoke.

Step 7: Sear them on both sides for 60 to 90 seconds. You will feel the crispiness on the surface of the steak.

A meat thermometer is the best way to ensure your beef tenderloin is cooked to perfection. When reheating, be sure not to exceed a medium-rare temperature, or the meat will become tough and dry.

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Before serving or cutting the beef tenderloin, let it rest for 5 minutes. It allows the juices to redistribute throughout the meat, making it more flavorful and moist. If you cut into it too soon, all of those delicious juices will bleed out, and your beef will be dry. 

Pro Tips : Using the rack will help warm up the surface of the steak in an elevated position. And by doing so, you can be 100% sure that your beef is piping hot evenly on both sides without any flipping required in the meantime.

Tip 2 : Last thing you should remember in this warming process is to look out for the steak, so it doesn’t dry out. While cooking the beef, you will find the melted butter and fat from the beef have created a stunning and aromatic liquid mixture. Add some of that extra meat juice to make the meat moist again.

Tip 3 : All you need to do is store some of the juice for the reheating process. However, if you have already forgotten to do so, you can always add your favorite tomato sauce, bbq sauce, vegetable oil, or any other flavor that you want to add to your steak.

Method 2: How to Warm Beef Tenderloin Using the Sous Vide Technique

The best way to reheat a steak is to reheat it at a constant low temperature. And such a technique is sous vide, where you will get your delicious beef steak warmed up at the right temperature without any chances of overcooking or undercooking. 

For this method, you will need-

• A Ziplock bag 
• A pan to boil water
• Skillet (if you want to sear the meat again)

And here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Let your leftover steak reach room temperature after removing them from the freeze.

Step 2: At the same time, warm up a potful of water to approximately 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It is highly unlikely that you will not have a thermometer in your kitchen like a professional restaurant. Remember that the water needs to be below the simmering point, as in, not so hot like boiling water and not so cold that you can hold your finger for 1 minute. 

Step 3: Put the steak in the bag and dip it in the water when you think it has reached room temperature and the water is warm enough to sous vide.

Step 4: Wait for 5 minutes and sear the steak over a stovetop if you want to get the charred crust over the beef tenderloin. 

Pro Tip : Sous vide is a well-known technique to warm and cook food because all the nutrition and flavor are trapped in the zip lock bag and inside the food. Make sure you have pressed out the extra air before locking the bag. And the rest of the techniques will do the trick. 

Method 3: Reheating Beef Tenderloin in the Microwave

If you wish to sacrifice the rich, mouth-watering perfect beef tenderloin steak, go ahead and try to microwave it. Of course, you don’t want that, but many times, you will have starving and stubborn kids at the dinner table who want to have only steaks. 

Reheating in the microwave can ruin even the most succulent of steaks as you cannot control the temperature. 

Similarly, warming the steak on the stovetop will only make the crust crispy again, but the inside of the meat will not be warm enough to taste as good as the night before. 

This is why you need the right way and follow the steps below to reheat in the microwave. 

Step 1: take out the stake from the freeze and bring the stake to room temperature.

Step 2: Place the beef in a deep dish. 

Step 3: Drizzle the steak juice or sauce. 

Step 4: Cover up the dish with a microwave-safe lid or plastic wrap. 

Step 5: Reheat in low to medium power for 60 seconds. You can flip over the steak and heat it again if the cut is thick. 

FAQ

Here are answers to some common questions that may pop into your mind. 

Conclusion

I hope this article helped you to find out how to reheat beef tenderloin without affecting the taste. 

Beef tenderloin steak takes hours of slow cooking in moderate to low temperatures to keep the tenderness and flavor of the meat. So, the wrong reheating techniques, for example, high heat, can destroy the taste of the meat. 

Remember, you want to warm the beef, not overcook it by continuing the cooking process. So, follow your suitable method using a stovetop, oven, or microwave and enjoy the delicious meat all over again.