Victor Albisu: Hi, I am Victor Albisu, Chef de Cuisine here at BLT Steak in Washington, DC. Today, we’re talking about beef basics, more specifically, the beef tenderloin which is found between the short loin and the sirloin. Now in our previous segment, we discussed the New York strip steak. The bone-in strip steak is cut from the same piece that we cut our porterhouse from and as I told you we are talking about the tenderloin and here, you will find the tenderloin on the porterhouse. Here is the New York strip on the porterhouse.

So this comes from the back end of the short loin where you have a bigger eye or piece of the tenderloin. The tenderloin generally, is about a foot long, a foot-and-a-half long maybe, and here we have an example of a steak cut from the tenderloin which is a fillet mignon. The fillet mignon in French means a "dainty" or a "cute" fillet. Now as you can see the fillet mignon is a not a very well marbled piece of meat as we talked about before in previous segments. It is a very tender piece of meat because the actual tenderloin extends from the short loin to the sirloin and it’s dressed up generally, like we do here in the restaurant. We dress it up with either Hollandaise or Barnaise, traditional fatty sauces that allow you to have and enjoy the tenderness of the fillet while also enjoying a little bit more flavor with it.

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration on beef basics. Just to recap, we have our hanger steak, our skirt steak which comes from the plate, our short plate. We have a rib eye which obviously comes from the rib and we have our two New York strips including the third here, the bone-in New York strip, the porterhouse which has a New York strip and tenderloin and our fillet mignon.

If there is any advice I could give you, it would be to develop a relationship with your butcher. There are great local farms and organic butcher shops all over the country in every state. They just need to be sought out. It is important if you’re a beef lover or a consumer of beef to make sure you're getting the best quality available to you. And it's not always the one in the supermarket, in the styrofoam container. It's the one that you can talk to your butcher about, he can talk to you about and he can explain to you the different cuts and what you’re going to get from them. I hope this has been an informative video and I hope it has raised your awareness of the basics of the beef.