Slow Cooked Beef Tenderloin - Tjälknöl

Today is a very special day - we're having a guest blogger! Welcome, Danne! (He's married to one of my dearest friends, Tesse. I wrote about their wedding, here.)
That's all from me - over to Danne. //Anne

When Anne asked me so politely if I wanted to guest blog, I just couldn’t say no. So here is my contribution: Slow Cooked Beef Tenderloin.

The Swedish name is “tjälknöl”, which roughly translated would be frost-bump.

The reason for that name is that you start the cooking with frozen meat. I use beef tenderloin even if it’s more often used on elk steaks, roast beef and such "bigger" pieces of meat.

You place the frozen piece of meat on the bars in the oven (75-90°C). (You might want to put something under the meat cause there will be some dripping.)

Let the meat stay in the oven until it reach the right temperature. For beef tenderloin that is 58-62°C. (If you use other meat, you have to check what the appropriate temperature for it is.)

Before the meat is ready in the oven, I prepare the marinade. How much you need depends on the size of bowl you will use later on, so for a large bowl, you need to double (or even triple) the basic marinade recipe.

The marinade is made of 1 litre of water, 100 ml of salt, some ground pepper and 2-3 bay leaves.

Mix some of the water and all of the salt in a pan and bring to a boil. (The only reason for this is to make the salt dissolve into the water more easily.) Then you add the rest of the water and spices. (You have to let the marinade cool off before you use it.)

Place the cooked meat in enough marinade to have it covered and place it in the fridge. I keep the tender sirloin there for about 6 hours. If you use a shorter time the meat will not take enough flavour. On the other hand, if you let it stay too long, it will make the meat a bit too salty. If you should use the recipe on larger pieces of meat, more time will be needed. Over night could be necessary.

When the meat has been in the marinade you wrap it in aluminium foil and keep it in the fridge until its time to eat it.

The result is meat that is extremely tender. It just melts in the mouth and has a touch of flavour from bay leaf. (Should you use another kind of meat, like elk, you can replace bay leaf with for example juniper berries.)

This way of preparing the meat is very easy. Even if the time it needs to be in the oven and in the fridge is long, the actual time used for doing something with the food is very short. When I was preparing the food for our wedding, my wife and I had time go and get some coffee with Anne and Per, while the meat was in the oven.

You can serve the meat with whatever you like, weather that is potato salad or potato gratin. It fits perfectly with almost anything!

Enjoy!