Smoked Beef Tenderloin on a Pit Boss Pellet Grill

Learn step by step how to make a Pit Boss Smoked Beef Tenderloin and why this is such a great way to prepare this ultimate beef roast.

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Beef tenderloin is the ultimate main dish to serve for a special meal. Each guest is essentially getting filet mignon, but you don't have to cook a bunch of individual steaks perfectly at the same time.

Our favorite way to prepare beef tenderloin is to revere sear it. This means to bring it up in temperature slowly and then sear it at the end. This will ensure a perfectly cooked interior with a delicious browned exterior.

Plan to trim and salt your beef tenderloin the night before you smoke it on your Pit Boss. You can wait until the day of to season the tenderloin depending on what works with your schedule.

The Dijon horseradish cream sauce can also be prepared in advance so you have one less thing to worry about the next day.

Jump to:

• Trim the Fat and Silverskin
• Season the Beef Tenderloin
• Video
• Tuck and Tie
• The Best Wood Pellets for Smoking Beef Tenderloin
• Start the Pit Boss
• Cooking Temperature
• Garlic Butter Baste
• Target Internal Temperature
• Cooking Time
• Reverse Searing a Smoked Beef Tenderloin
• Carve and Serve the Beef Tenderloin
• 📖 Recipe

Trim the Fat and Silverskin

If your beef tenderloin comes fully trimmed, great, if not...you will need to do a little work before seasoning it and throwing it on the Pit Boss.

Use a good boning or filet knife like our favorite one from iMarku to first remove the silver skin from the top of the beef tenderloin.

This will allow you to better see where the chain attaches to the tenderloin.  The tenderloin chain is the fatty piece of meat that runs along the side of the main tenderloin.

There's nothing wrong with this cut of meat so don't just discard it.  You can use it for beef stock or cube it up for a beef stew.

We want to remove it for our purposes for the main event.

Pull the chain away from the tenderloin and then cut it off.  You will need to do this on both sides, although one side is usually a lot bigger than the other.

Then remove any remaining silverskin and fatty pieces until you have a nice cleaned up beef tenderloin in front of you.

Season the Beef Tenderloin

When it comes to an expensive cut of meat like a beef tenderloin, you want to keep the seasonings fairly simple and let the meat shine through.

Save the sugary and spicy BBQ rubs for your brisket, ribs and pork butts. Especially if you plan to sear the beef tenderloin at the end like we do, it is important to avoid using sugar that will burn with exposure to high direct heat.

We prefer to keep it simple by using Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

If you want to use a quality beef rub for dry brining your beef tenderloin, we are big fans of Bad Byron's Butt Rub Seasoning on smoked beef because it is heavy on flavor, and has no sugar.

Meat Church Holy Cow is also great on beef as it also does not contain sugar.

Video

Rather WATCH than read? Check out our Pit Boss Smoked Beef Tenderloin video on our YouTube Channel:

Tuck and Tie

We will be smoking the beef tenderloin on a wire rack on a baking tray to allow for proper air circulation around the meat.

You'll notice one end of the beef tenderloin is much thicker than the other.

We are going to tuck the thin "tail" underneath and tie it so that the tenderloin is a more even thickness from end to end and therefore cooks more evenly throughout.

You can use some simple butchers twine to keep it in place.

The easiest way to do this is to lay pieces of butchers twine across the wire rack.

Then place the seasoned beef tenderloin on top of the strings and tie them tightly.

If the rest of the beef tenderloin is more flat than tubular, take some more twine and tie it around every inch or so to help the meat maintain its shape.

This will allow it to cook more evenly like a round roast rather than a flat steak.

You can keep it on the counter for up to two hours while you season it and start the Pit Boss so that it comes up closer to room temperature before you start smoking.

The Best Wood Pellets for Smoking Beef Tenderloin

You have a lot of freedom when it comes to choosing the right wood pellets to smoke your Pit Boss beef tenderloin.

Mesquite and hickory will give a very aggressive smoke flavor.

Alternatively, you can also go for a milder smoke flavor by choosing oak or fruitwood pellets.

Pecan, apple, beech, alder, and cherry all give great results on smoked beef tenderloin.

Don't forget you can mix them up too to create your own custom blend.

That's one of the great things about a Pit Boss pellet grill!

For a straightforward smoke at a mid-range price, we are big fans of Bear Mountain Gourmet Blend Pellets.

For premium pellets, we really love Knotty Wood 100% Plum Wood Pellets and Almond Cabernet Wine Blend Pellets.

Since these are more expensive than other brands, we generally save them to use in a pellet tube smoker right next to the meat.

For the best results, store your unused pellets in a sealed room temperature container like this 20 lb pellet container rather than in the Pit Boss hopper outside.

Pellets do not last forever, but will definitely last a LOT longer if stored indoors in a quality airtight container.

We like adding a firebox with charcoal and real wood chunks to our Pit Boss to bump up the smoke flavor. For beef, we like using hickory wood.

Start the Pit Boss

We have previously covered how to season a Pit Boss, how to start a Pit Boss, as well as how to troubleshoot the smoke level of your pellet grill.

If you need a more in-depth review on how to use your Pit Boss for the first time, check those articles out first!

First, you add hardwood pellets into the side hopper. Plug in the grill and let it go through the start up cycle.

It will take about 10-15 minutes to preheat the grill. Meanwhile, make sure the grates are clean. We use the BBQ Daddy for the Pit Boss grates.

Cooking Temperature

After preheating, we recommend initially setting up the Pit Boss to cook at 250°F.

This seems to be the sweet spot where the temperature is low enough that the outside doesn't overcook but also high enough that the beef tenderloin doesn't cook for so long that it dries out.

You can place the entire baking sheet/wire rack combo on the grates of the Pit Boss.

If you're using a firebox, place it to the left of your meat so the smoke will flow over the meat on its way out the exhaust chimney.

Garlic Butter Baste

While the beef tenderloin is smoking, we will baste it with garlic butter to keep it moist and give it some extra flavor and brown color.

If you don't care for garlic, just use plain butter.

To make a garlic butter baste, melt the butter and stir in the garlic paste.

Spoon the garlic butter over the beef tenderloin.

Then use a small silicone basting brush to evenly distribute the garlic butter over the surface of the beef.

Target Internal Temperature

You HAVE to use a good instant read meat thermometer to know where the internal temperature is of your smoked beef tenderloin while it's cooking on the Pit Boss.

Ideally, you want a good leave in probe thermometer like the ThermoPro as well as a second instant read to spot check different points of thickness along the roast.

While we have used and recommended ThermoPro for years, lately we have also become big fans of the MEATER leave in thermometer.

It is extremely accurate and has an incredible 165 foot Bluetooth range and works right with your smartphone so you don't need to carry a separate controller around with you like many other remote thermometers require.

In fact, the thermometer itself is COMPLETELY WIRELESS, so no more awkward wires running out of the side of your smoker!

It has a great free app that is constantly being updated and even has an algorithm to predict how much longer your type of meat will take to cook based on cooking temperature, target temperature, and current internal temperature.

It's like a GPS for your meat!

We are going to slowly bring the internal temperature up to about 105-110°F, then crank the heat as hot as we can to reverse sear the smoked beef tenderloin until the internal temperature hits about 120°F and then remove it from the Pit Boss.

Perfect medium rare in the center means a FINAL internal temperature of about 130-135°F, and a good rule of thumb is to pull big roasts like this when they are 10°F shy of your target temperature.

Once you switch over to the reverse searing phase, (more on that below), and are rolling the smoked beef tenderloin around over a hot grill it's much easier to use an instant read thermometer rather than the leave in probe kind.

We are particular fans of this one from ThermoPro because of its durability and affordable price.

Everyone from beginner smokers to competition cooks need to use instant thermometers to consistently make great food.

So keep it handy and use it often.

Cooking Time

A general guide is that it will take about 20-30 minutes per pound to smoke a beef tenderloin at 250°F up to 110°F.

So plan on a 3 pound beef tenderloin to take about 60-90 minutes to initially smoke during the "Low" portion of the cook.

Then we will crank the heat for another 3-5 minutes depending how long it takes to raise the internal temperature the rest of the way up to 120-125°F.

Then you will need to let the meat rest for about 15-20 minutes after cooking it before carving.

Unless you want those delicious juices running all over your cutting board instead of staying in the meat where you want them, you need to set aside time for the meat to rest.

Reverse Searing a Smoked Beef Tenderloin

"Reverse Searing" is just a fancy term for searing your meat at the very end, once it is pretty much all the way cooked through, in order to get a nice crispy exterior crust that you sometimes just can't get from low and slow smoking alone.

In this case, we are not technically going to sear the beef tenderloin like we might do with a steak in a ripping hot cast iron pan like we did with our smoked ribeye steak recipe.

Rather, we are going to crank the temperature of our Pit Boss up as high as it will go right at the very end of cooking, and only for a few minutes, in order to get a nice, golden brown crust on the outside of our smoked beef tenderloin without overcooking the inside.

If your Pit Boss has a DIRECT HEAT option, then you can switch this on and move your beef tenderloin over above the heat like you might do on a gas propane burner.

If you wish to reverse sear the meat, you will want to smoke it at 250°F only until it reaches an internal temperature of about 110°F.  At this point it will still be very, very rare in the center.

Next, you will turn up the temperature setting on your Pit Boss to "High", or the highest temperature setting it has available, depending on your model.

If you have the Direct heat, option, move the beef over the exposed heat and turn it frequently.

Make sure you have plenty of pellets in your hopper for this part as it will burn through them quickly at these high temps.

You will need to watch your beef tenderloin VERY closely at this point as it may only need 3-5 minutes total once the Pit Boss comes fully up to the new high temperature.

Watch for the color to turn from grayish to medium-dark brown, and whatever you do, do not leave it unattended to burn or over cook!

Make sure to turn frequently and continuously spot check with your instant read thermometer.

Once the internal temperature has reached 120-125°F, remove it from the Pit Boss and place it on a cutting board.

Remember, it will continue to rise another 10°F as it rests after you remove it.

DO NOT cover or wrap in aluminum foil or it will overcook beyond this level from its own residual heat.

Using Grill Grates to Reverse Sear your Beef Tenderloin on a Pit Boss

If you are using an older model Pit Boss pellet grill that doesn't have a high heat or direct grilling option, and finding it hard to get that high heat needed for searing, try laying a couple of Grill Grates over a section of the RIGHT side of grill.

Even if you have the direct heat feature like on our Pit Boss Pro Series 1150, you can still use the Grill Grates and

We like adding some Wagyu beef tallow to the grates to grease them before placing the meat on top.

These work great for creating a hot searing station on a pellet grill using the ambient heat the pellet grill is already creating.

You can then move your smoked beef tenderloin over to the Grill Grates, with the flat side of the Grill Grates up, and roll it around and cook it like you would on a hot flat top griddle.

For more information on the gloves and liners we use, see our Mads' Must Haves.

Once the beef tenderloin reaches an internal temperature of 125°F, you will remove it from the hot grill and let it rest if you are going for medium rare. The internal temperature will rise to 130-135°F during resting.

For medium, smoke the beef tenderloin to 115°F then sear it to 130°F so it reaches a final temperature of 135-140°F.

Carve and Serve the Beef Tenderloin

Let the roast rest for 20-30 minutes before carving.

Although we tucked and tied the tail, and mostly slow smoked the beef tenderloin for ideal even cooking, the portions closer to the ends will still be more done than the very center.

This is nice because as you slice you can give the more done pieces on the ends to those that prefer them.

Then give the more medium rare slices from the center to those that prefer their meat less done.

Use a good meat slicing knife and cut the smoked beef tenderloin into nice thick slices based on how many guests you are serving.

We particularly like this meat slicing knife from Mairico.

We love to serve smoked beef tenderloin with a homemade Dijon horseradish cream sauce. The ingredients are in the recipe card below.

Beef tenderloin goes great with Smoked Mashed Potatoes, Smoked Baked Potatoes, Smoked Twice Baked Potatoes, and Smoked Asparagus.

📖 Recipe