How to Cook Beef Wellington
A tenderloin steak, pate and puff pastry are the main ingredients in this rich beef dish that is as impressive as it is delicious. Beef Wellington is pricey enough to keep it from being an everyday meal, and it requires a bit of skill and patience to prepare. But once you become an expert on how to cook Beef Wellington, you'll know how to make a gourmet meal that is hard to surpass in flavor and presentation.If you plan ahead, you can have as much fun cooking a gourmet meal as you can eating it afterwords. Look for sales on beef tenderloin steaks to cut down on the cost of this meal. Parcel out your calories for the day carefully so you can eat this decadent, elegant main course without feeling guilty. (Each serving has 743 calories.) Moderate the richness by serving simple steamed vegetables for side dishes.
Transcript
Hello everyone, I'm Judith with recipe.com, and today, I'm gonna
be showing you how to make an indulging British classic,
an individual Beef Wellington, that's right. So, what we're gonna
need is 3 quarter cups of water. We have 17.5
ounces of puffy pastry, which we've fold out. We have
1-1/2 teaspoons of chopped parsley.
We have a quarter teaspoon of dry thyme. We have
2 tablespoons of butter. We have 2 tablespoons of pate.
We have 1 bay leaf, 1 tablespoon of finely chopped
shallots. We have 1 egg white, which we've beaten. We
have quarter teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of black
pepper, and a quarter teaspoon of dried margarine. We have
1/3 of a cup of red wine
and half a teaspoon of instant beef bullion granules, and
right here we have 2 steaks, about 4 ounces each
of beef tenderloin, delicious. So, let's get the party started,
shall we. So, first things first, we're gonna mix our
herbs. So let's get our salts, our pepper, and our
margarine in there and that is gonna be our nice
seasoning
for the beef. So we just mix that up a
little bit, and we'll get our beef, and we'll just
season our steaks with this very nice, both sides like
so. Now sometimes in England, we actually cook the whole
beef tenderloin, and puff pastry, but today, we're just gonna
be doing individual launch to nice little steaks.
So, for those of you who do not know what
a beef Wellington is, it's basically beef tenderloin smothered in
pate, wrapped in puff pastry, and baked. That's what it
is, delicious, and yes very indulgent. So, now that we
have our steak seasoned, we're gonna get our pate and
we're gonna spread on half of it on each steak.
So, we might have to us our hands every so
slightly
because depending on the consistency of your pate. This one
is a little bit stiffer pate. So, choose the pate
of your choice of course. If you prefer a [unk],
I do, that works great, and we'll do a little
bit more here. Now, a lot of people wonder why
call it a beef Wellington. Well, of course, the easy
answer is that the Duke of Wellington in England loved
it so much
that they named it after him, but there's plenty of
other stories too, and one of them goes that a
British chef wanted to name at something because the only
have the name in French, which was called boeuf en
croute, and they didn't wanna name it the French version
because obviously they were going through the Napoleonic wars, The
Brits and the French, so they came with a name
Wellington after the Duke of course.
and some people say that it just looks a miliary
boot that the Duke of Wellington were. So, there you
go. That's all your stories. You choose one of them.
Now, let's get our pastry. So, we've cut our pastry
into 2 sections. We've just lie them flat. Stretch them
out a little bit because what we're gonna do now
is place all steaks pate side down on top of
our pastry,
and we're gonna do a nice little gift wrapping session
now, we're just gonna cover our steaks as best we
can, stretch your pastry out if you need to over
the steak. Oh, that's right. Oh lovely, just like that.
Give it a nice coating like that. If you have
any excess pastry, you can sniff it off,
but this one is just fine like this, same goes
with this steak, pate side down, do a nice little
fold both ways. I mean, if you're watching your weight,
it's not the best one to do I would suggest.
Alright, we'll cover that up. We can just enclose the
endings with our pastry like so and doesn't it look
great already?
Okay, we have our baking dish, which we've greased with
butter, and what we're gonna do now is place our
beef Wellington, you know, with our pastry side that we've
done, side down like so. We'll bring it on to
the board right here, and now gonna get our paste
to brush, get our egg white mixture, and we're just
gonna based it over the top
so will stay nice and moist so the pastry won't
burn. So, make sure you got a nice amount of
egg mixture all over that and on the sides, great,
alright, it's another to baste it nicely. We're gonna pop
that in the oven. Now, we've preheated our oven to
425 degrees Fahrenheit, and this is gonna go in for
15 minutes.
So, while our beef Wellington is cooking up there in
the oven, we're gonna put together a nice sauce to
have with it. So, we're gonna get a little saucepan,
and we're gonna put it to a medium heat, and
we're gonna add in our water, our red wine, our
shallots go in there as well, our lovely thyme,
it's gonna give a great flavor, our beef granules are
in there and of course our bay leaf goes in
there as well. So, we're gonna give it a quick
stir. We're gonna bring it to the boil, and then
we're gonna let it simmer for about 5 to 7
minutes. Okay, so while that's simmering there, I'm gonna combine
my 2 tablespoons of butter in there
Now, I didn't mentioned it earlier, but I have some
flour to thick it up our gravy here, so we
have 1 tablespoon of flour. We're just gonna go in
with our butter. All purpose flour is great, and we're
just gonna mix it in, okay, let's get a spoon
even better. Mix it in altogether. Try and get your
butter nice and soft before you start, otherwise, you can
use margarine too. So that's just gonna be
a nice little mixture to get our sauce thick. So,
we've taken our beef Wellington out of the oven. They
should be about medium there if they've been there for
about 15 minutes and they just look spectacular. This is
a very excited phase. They are golden, they are crispy,
and they smell great, wonderful. So, we're just gonna let
them rest for a little bit right there. We'll go
back to our sauce. Our red wine sauce is simmering
there. So, now it's time to add in our butter
flour mixture.
We're gonna put that in there and stir that up
until it got nice and thick. So, keep stirring there,
let it thicken up a little, and now we can
add in our parsley too, just gonna give a really
nice fresh subtle bite.
Oh, that's looks good. Now, at this point, let's not
forget to take out our bay leaf because we don't
wanna be eating that. So, we'll take it out, discard
that, but that just given a really nice flavor. So,
that's thickening up, really, really beautiful, give it one minute
more.
Lovely, so we can take that off the heat. We'll
pour it into our lovely dish here. So, that's our
red wine sauce. So, as you can see our beef
Wellington is done fantastically.
Nice and golden brown right there, ready to serve up,
all you need to do is put a little drizzle
of our red wine gravy on top and that's it.
If the duke was here himself, he would be very
proud. That's how you make you individual beef Wellington. Well,
thanks for watching everyone. For more great recipes and savings,
go to recipe.com.
What You'll Need
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed
- 2 beef tenderloin steaks (4 to 6 ounces each)
- 1/2 of a 17.3-ounce package (1 sheet) frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 2 tablespoons deli or canned mushroom pate or liver pate
- 1 beaten egg white
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/3 cup dry red wine
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot or onion
- 1/2 teaspoon instant beef bouillon granules
- 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoon snipped parsley
Step By Step
1
In a small bowl stir together salt, pepper, and marjoram. Rub salt mixture over steaks, coating all sides.
2
Cut thawed pastry into 2 portions. Spread 1 tablespoon pate over one side of each steak. Place a steak, pate side down, on the center of each portion of pastry. Wrap pastry around meat. Trim excess pastry from ends; seal ends.
3
Place pastry-wrapped meat, seam sides down, in a greased, shallow baking pan. Brush pastry with beaten egg white. If desired, reroll trimmings to make cutouts. Place cutouts on pastry-wrapped meat. Brush with beaten egg white.
4
Bake, uncovered, in a 425 degree F oven about 15 minutes or until pastry is golden and meat is medium-rare. If desired, test doneness of meat by inserting a meat thermometer into pastry-wrapped meat. Medium-rare is 145 degrees F.
5
Meanwhile, in a small saucepan combine water, dry red wine, finely chopped shallot or onion, instant beef bouillon granules, dried thyme, crushed; and 1 bay leaf. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 to 7 minutes or until mixture is reduced to 3/4 cup. Remove bay leaf.
6
Stir together softened margarine or butter and all-purpose flour. Add to wine mixture. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 1 minute more. Stir in snipped parsley. Serve with pastry-wrapped beef. Makes 2 servings.
7
Recipe may be doubled to serve 4.
People may be surprised that you know how to cook Beef Wellington, because it's so often thought of as a complicated dish that only experienced chefs would dare to try. You'll find that this recipe isn't hard at all, and it produces delectable, individual Wellingtons that can't help but impress your dinner guests.
More Recipes
Looking for an impressive dish for the holidays? It takes a little time to put this dish together, but it's simple to do...and the results are outstanding and delicious.
The English have relished meat baked in pastry since Shakespeare's day. This one is made easy by using frozen puff pastry.
Prepare the components of the Wellingtons the day before or the morning before you intend to assemble them. Once assembled, freeze them for at least six to eight hours (ideally overnight) and up to a week. Make sure you have plenty of room in your freezer before starting.
A variation of the classic beef Wellington, this stunning entree stars boneless chicken breasts topped with a mushroom-onion mix and wrapped in tender Pepperidge Farm® Pastry Sheets.
Thomas Carrig of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., stumbled upon this creation while trying to make the perfect beef Wellington--without beef. "A creative cook can prepare it with different fillings," he says.
