At a very minimum, I like to use three: button mushrooms, shiitake, and portobello. All are easily found in any supermarket, and all bring a little something to the party. If you want to get extra fancy, go ahead and use oysters, chanterelles, morels, lobster, giant powderpuff, mousseron, or whatever else strikes your fancy. If you've got it in the budget, some chopped truffles stirred into the duxelles at the very end would not be unwelcome in this dish.
With the exception of using a food processor to chop the 'shrooms, our duxelles starts just like the classic. Mushrooms cooked in butter until they give up their moisture, then a handful of chopped shallots and chopped thyme that get cooked until soft.
We're already using tenderloin, mushrooms, and foie gras, why not throw in a bit more luxury? Some booze will do nicely. I deglaze the pan with Cognac, though any high-proof, dry, barrel-aged spirit will do. Armagnac, applejack, bourbon, Scotch, even a dark rum, if that's what you'd like. After adding some heavy cream which reduces down and binds the mushrooms into a thick paste—the better to adhere to the meat with—I add a dash of soy sauce.
Soy sauce, with its high levels of glutamic acid, is a natural umami-bomb. It makes things taste meatier, more savory. It makes the mushrooms taste more like mushrooms, if you will, and the tenderloin more like an entire steer and all of its flavor compressed down into a single tenderloin-sized package. How can we improve upon this? I sear off a few ounces of foie gras in a hot skillet, slice the slabs in half lengthwise, then layer them over the beef.
As the dish bakes, the foie fat slowly renders, basting the beef in its juices so that when you slice into the finished Wellington, it oozes more juice than even a fatty prime rib roast.
And that rendered fat in the skillet you seared the foie gras in? Don't waste it! Into the mushroom duxelles it goes. With all our elements in place, it's time to move on to the assembly phase.
For all its steps and ingredients, a beef Wellington is really not a difficult dish technique-wise. There are only two real major problems that arise when you bake it. The first is keeping the puff pastry from turning soggy. What with all the fatty ingredients—the foie gras, the duxelles— there are plenty of juices that are trying to escape from within their puff pastry enclosure. These juices need to be contained to prevent the pastry from leaking. The second problem is one of timing.
Puff pastry takes at least half an hour to 40 minutes to properly brown and puff—more than enough time for a tenderloin to overcook. Let's start with tackling the first problem: moisture. There are a few common solutions to the problem, but I don't find either of them to be particularly attractive. The first is to wrap the beef in shingled layers of a raw cured ham generally prosciutto.
From a flavor standpoint, this idea is top notch. The ham melds very nicely into the foie and duxelles, and it does make wrapping the beef relatively simple. Thin sliced ham is like nature's Velcro in that way. The problem is that it doesn't really prevent moisture from leaking out. Indeed, as it cooks, it renders its own moisture, actually adding to the problem.
I suggest a much simpler, more effective, and time-saving alternative: prosciutto and a sheet of phyllo dough. It's pretty much custom made for the job. Phyllo dough is ultra-thin thus doesn't distract us with any unwanted flavors or textures , but quite strong, designed to wrap moist fillings without leaking.
It's also available inexpensively in any supermarket. I use a single sheet of phyllo, shingle on my prosciutto, spread my duxelles over that, and we're good to go. So long as the duxelles has cooled to a paste-like consistency, wrapping is relatively easy.
The trick is to use a double layer of plastic wrap to help you out, exactly the same way you'd use a bamboo mat to make makizushi sushi rolls. Indeed, the process is pretty much identical. The phyllo and ham layer is the nori, the duxelles is the rice, and the beef and foie gras are the fish and vegetables.
It's only the scale that's different. Once rolled, I re-wrap the whole thing as tightly as I possibly can in clingfilm, using several layers and twisting the ends. This step is absolutely vital, as it's what will determine the shape of the Wellington in its final form.
This is where we now address the second problem—not overcooking the meat while finishing off the pastry properly. To solve this problem, it's a simple as making sure that the beef is completely chilled before it gets wrapped.
At this stage, the whole roll should go back into the fridge for at least half an hour, and up to a couple days, to get it thoroughly chilled. If you want to be a true food hero, you could make your own puff pastry you overachiever, you. But I don't find it necessary when there are some excellent frozen puff pastry brands on the market. Puff pastry like pie dough happens to be one of the foods that freezes best, losing none of its flavor or puffing ability during its stay in the freezer.
The key to finding a good brand is to check the ingredients—the only fat in there should be butter, and there should be no artificial or natural flavorings of any kind. Butter provides enough flavor on its own, thanks.
I use Dufour brand puff pastry, which is pretty widely available. Prep Time 10 mins. Cook Time 2 hrs. Total Time 2 hrs 10 mins. Servings 4 servings. Preheat the oven:. Sear the filet:. Brush the filet with mustard:. Prepare the mushroom duxelles:. Wrap the filet in mushroom paste and ham:. Roll out the puff pastry and wrap the beef filet:. Brush with the egg wash and score:. Bake in oven:. Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.
In cases where multiple ingredient alternatives are given, the first listed is calculated for nutrition. Garnishes and optional ingredients are not included. Rate This Recipe. I don't like this at all. It's not the worst. Sure, this will do. I'm a fan—would recommend. I love it! Thanks for your rating! Show Full Recipe. When wrapping the pastry around your beef, wrap it as tightly as possible: this will help prevent any of the juices leaking out in the cooking process.
Another tip to create a really crisp outer layer to your Wellington is to wrap your pastry parcel in cling film and chill in the fridge for a while before cooking. This, again, helps to firm up the pastry and will stop it absorbing the juices from the beef.
Fun facts for kids Non-chocolate advent calendars Royal news. Home Recipes. We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article. Ingredients g flat cap mushrooms, roughly chopped sea salt and freshly ground black pepper olive oil, for cooking g piece of prime beef fillet tbsp English mustard slices of Parma ham g ready-made puff pastry flour, to dust 2 egg yolks, beaten.
Method Put the mushrooms into a food processor with some seasoning and pulse to a rough paste. Not only does it look and taste spectacular, but it's surprisingly simple, and can be prepared ahead of time, ready to eat on the battlefield of festive fun. Starting on the outside and working in, I'm surprised to find that, although I've always assumed puff pastry a non-negotiable aspect of a wellington, there are dissenters — possibly motivated by a desire to further Anglicise the boeuf en croute.
Most notably, Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham, who use a "quick flaky pastry" in the Prawn Cocktail Years while conceding that puff is the more traditional choice. Intriguingly they also suggest brioche dough is a possibility, but despite following a promising lead for a Julia Child recipe using the very same, I'm unable to find it in either volume of Mastering the Art of French Cookery — any leads would be most welcome. Their flaky pastry is easy enough to make, and the result buttery, damp with meat juices and meltingly soft, almost like a steak pudding rather than a pie is popular with my wellington panel, but compared to the puff used by Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay and James Martin, patriotically heavy.
We Britons already have our glorious meat pies: let this be something a little more delicate. Madalene Bonvini-Hamel of the British Larder, meanwhile, advocates a rough puff , because "only the very best ingredients will do for this recipe" — implying and rightly so in my opinion that very few home cooks will have the patience or the chilliness of hand to do justice to a proper puff. I've made enough sausage rolls in my time that rough puff, with all its meticulous folding and chilling, holds little fear for me, but honestly, I think this is one of those times that only the bouffant lightness of proper puff will cut the mustard.
You can make your own — indeed, for a special occasion, you should give it a go — but with enough other things to think about, particularly at this time of year, I'd be the first to advocate cheating, and using one of the excellent ready-made all-butter puffs that have made life so much easier for the pragmatic cook.
Simon and Lindsey observe in the preface to their beef wellington recipe that "the whole point of cooking meat in pastry is to keep in the juices I'm largely with them — after all, using puff pastry should ensure the top is still ambitiously lofty, while the base is a melting mass of beefy, buttery decadence — but, as a seasoned MasterChef viewer, I know how much a soggy bottom displeases the highest culinary power in the land Michel Roux Jr and I'm nothing if not aspirational.
Pancakes, according to classical lore, will soak up the meat juices, leaving the pastry unscathed. Although, outside MasterChef HQ at least, the concept seems to have fallen from fashion recently, James Martin is still a devotee , prompting me to make four savoury crepes to wrap my beef and mushroom mixture in before I can even begin thinking pastry.
Not only are the cooled pancakes more difficult to roll than I'd anticipated, causing my sous chef Richard to pause and watch in horrified fascination before I shoo him out of the kitchen, but the finished result is decidedly stodgy.
Save that room for more meat. You'll need the extra room too — some recipes, not content with an enormous hunk of beef, have to pop some pork in too. Gordon wraps the fillet in pancetta, while James Martin opts for Parma ham. Ham, being leaner and slightly thinner, works better I think, but it's still an unnecessary distraction, given it doesn't seem to do anything in the way of providing a protective seal for the meat juices, as I assume it's intended to.
Salty and stridently savoury, it steals the thunder from the more delicately flavoured beef.
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