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.
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