Filet Tips vs Filet Mignon: What Is the Difference?
Filet tips come off the same tenderloin as filet mignon. The difference is geometry and price, and the geometry is why the price moves.
A whole tenderloin is a long tapered muscle. The middle is even in diameter and the two ends narrow away. That shape is the entire story here.
Why the center costs more
The even center portions into neat, uniform medallions that all cook at the same rate. That is worth money in a restaurant and at a dinner party, and it is almost all of what you are paying the premium for.
The tapered ends cannot be cut that way. They come off as irregular pieces of various thicknesses, sold as tips and tails. Same muscle, same tenderness, awkward shape.
“You think more farms should adopt knowing your numbers, managing your farm, like a business.”
Gray Shipley
What to do with tips
- Skewers. Irregular pieces are exactly what a skewer wants.
- Stroganoff or a quick stir-fry. Cut small and cooked fast, shape stops mattering entirely.
- Steak sandwiches. Sliced thin after cooking, nobody can tell.
- Not a long braise. There is no collagen here to reward it. See beef tips against stew meat.
“Farming should adapt or adopt lean practices, learn from the Japanese, look for and eliminate waste. And so that's where technology has its application using technology as tools to find and eliminate waste and bring efficiency.”
Gray Shipley
Which to buy
Mignon when the presentation is the point and everything has to cook evenly. Tips when it is going into something, which is most weeknights, and you would rather keep the difference.
“Or the other side of it is it's the lower quality meat is made cheaper because you're giving up something. You're giving up the authenticity and the quality and the process.”
Gray Shipley
Same muscle as the mignon, awkward shape, much better price.
View ProductWhat is the difference between filet tips and filet mignon?
Same muscle. The mignon is the even center section and the tips are the tapered ends.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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