How To Prepare Filet Mignon With A Rice Cooker And Indoor Grill

This past Saturday my clan (my girl and her son) decided we were going to get something to eat from Wegman's. If you aren't familiar with this place it is a very nice grocery store. What I especially like is their meat department. I suggested we cook tenderloins. She was in agreement with this since she knew I knew how to prepare filet mignon (and it wouldn't make her sick). When we got to Wegman's we decided on our cuts of meat, the butcher wrapped it for us and off we went. As we strolled through the store she asked,"What are we putting with this? rice or potatoes." without a thought I said, "Yellow Rice and beans". I knew exactly what I was going to do as well. I was gonna make all this in my Zojirushi Rice Cooker.

These rice cookers are easy to use and operate. I like them because they make high quality rice every time and you can cook so much more in them than just rice. Because I stay hungry all the time because of my athletic lifestyle I can make a bunch of different recipes and it will stay warm in these things for a while.I know you can make rice in anything but I have tried cheap rice cookers and they just are no good in my opinion. Yes, these things are expensive but worth every dime in my opinion.

Anyway, once we got home there were a few things to do before I could put all this in my rice cooker. I needed to grill the meat first. Since I love appliances I had the perfect device to do this on. My Cuisinart Griddler.

I am by no means an expert at cooking. However, I do know how to make my filet mignons and simple things on my Cuisinart GR-4N Griddler. I haven't had any complaints...at least to my face. Really it was pretty simple to get my tenderloins going on my grill. I just installed the grill plates and used the following recipe as I sipped on a cool Corona:

• 4 (6-oz.) beef tenderloin fillets
• 1 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1. Preheat grill to 350° to 400° (medium-high). Sprinkle fillets with pepper and salt.
• 2. Grill, covered with grill lid, over 350° to 400° (medium-high) heat 4 to 6 minutes on each side or to desired degree of doneness. Let stand 5 minutes.

The Cuisinart grill has a big dial on it so you can't get the temperature wrong. Once the steaks were all done to a medium rare state. I chopped them up so that they could cook just a bit more in the rice cooker with the yellow rice and beans. At this point it was so far, so good; I had the pefrect filet mignon going.

While I was cooking the tenderloins. Jr and his mom was getting the rice ready in the cooker. It is really simple to do, you just follow th instructions in the book. Also, there are lines inside the cooking bowl in the cooker that tell you where to put water and rice. However, by the time I added the tenderloins the rice was really in it's warming stage which in this rice cooker can be from completion of cooking to 12 hrs if you like. I just added the tenderloins to get some more of the pink out.

As the food was nearing completion jr starts complaining about how he is hungry. Luckily the food was just about ready so I sampled the fruits of my labor. As I bit into a spoon full of my concoction I was really wandering how tender the meat would be. Just as I had hoped it was still pretty tender and had the grilled taste to it.

We prepared our plates and sat down to eat. As my girl bit into hers I could tell by the look on her face that she knew she could never cook like me and I told her. Because she came to grim realization that I prepared something she could never duplicate the jealousy mounted on her face. As I burst into a semi -buzzed cackle from drinking a beer on an empty stomach ( I never drink) she simple said with a smile, "Good job baby."