Pork Tenderloin
Whole, about 1–1.5 lb, trimmed of silver skin
Pork Tenderloin: roast at 425°F for about 20 min. Internal temp: 145°F / 63°C.
Cooking Methods
↕ Slide the temperature to see how cook times change
Tenderloins are usually sold in cryovac packs of two, often pre-marinated (Smithfield, Hormel in the States). Those are fine for weeknights, but if you want control and like things your way, a plain one you season yourself will always taste better. This could be a wives tale but I typically tend to believe that pre-marinated meats at big chains are older pieces of meat and the marinade is used to cover that up. Before cooking, find the silver skin: that's the thin, pearly-white membrane running along one side. Slide a thin knife just under it, angle the blade slightly up, and peel it off in strips. We remove it because it never breaks down and it'll make the meat curl and turn chewy if you leave it on. That's 30 seconds of work that genuinely matters. One more trick: the tail end tapers thin, so tuck it under and tie it with a loop of butcher's twine. This ensures the whole thing cooks evenly instead of leaving you with a dried-out tip. Raw tenderloin keeps 2 to 3 days in the fridge and freezes well for up to 6 months wrapped tight in plastic then foil.
Pork tenderloin is the leanest, fastest-cooking cut of pork you can buy. A 1 to 1.5 lb tenderloin is done in under 25 minutes and feeds two to three people. Before you cook pork tenderloin, make sure that's actually what you bought. Half the people searching "how to cook pork tenderloin" are holding a pork loin, and the two are nothing alike. Tenderloin is the long, skinny one (1 to 1.5 lbs, no fat cap); loin is the fatty, two-to-five-pound roast that takes an hour-plus. Grab the wrong one, follow the wrong cooking time, and you'll either serve raw pork or shoe leather. The other thing that trips people up is internal temp: the safe number is 145°F, not the 160°F your grandmother used (USDA dropped it in 2011) and that 15 degrees is the entire difference between juicy and dry. Below you'll find times and temps for roasting, grilling, sous vide, and the slow cooker.
Pork tenderloin is safe at 145°F with a 3-minute rest (USDA updated this from 160°F in 2011). It's a very lean cut, so going past 150°F dries it out quickly. A slight pink center at 145°F is perfectly safe and much juicier. Use a thermometer, placing it into the thickest part going in from the end along the length so that the tip sits dead center.