Recreating Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington From Taste | Bon Appétit

hey guys it's Karla I'm here in the bone Appetit test kitchen today for a very secret conversation about Chris Morocco we want to test Chris's super taster capabilities this is Gordon Ramsay's beef wellington Chris has two days to replicate this exact dish he will be able to smell it he will be able to touch it and he'll be able to taste it but he may not look at it to try to figure out what it is at the end of the second day of cooking I will come back and taste his final creation and I'll be the judge there's a Yorkshire pudding aroma to this it's like a toasty roasty earthy slightly kind of sweet aroma like a kind of like savory thing that's encased in some kind of very rich pastry do I feel like there's anything on top I feel like no oh flaky salt you sly girl that pastry is not shattering as I go through it you know you have this like roughly circular piece of meat and just like kind of makes sense to me that this would be beef there seems to be some other thing in this layer in here it feels kind of like Pam or something I can't tell if the meat itself is flavoring standard ham or if that is actually kind of in like the realm of prosciutto or something I'm gonna get into this meat situation filet mignon there's this layer of stuff there's something really intensely earthy about that layer I think we're gonna go ahead and call that mushroom let's assume there's like a little garlic and thyme in there oh god I'm getting like white wine onion maybe it's red wine butter maybe it's shallot there's like some like real like snap an acid it's possible that it was adjusted on the backend with like just a touch of vinegar how is this actually constructed was this a raw piece of meat simply placed into this pastry case and then baked or did this got a quick sear in a skillet if I had to guess like right now I'd say this is like a beef wellington but what is beef wellington like I can't friggin remember what beef wellington is it's just like a name that I know who so okay there's like the pastry element puff pastry the meats that's filet the ham that's vexing me for sure but I think I might get like a couple of options mushrooms stock white wine red wine and garlic butter shallot I'm gonna need flaky salt a couple of eggs for an egg wash I feel pretty good about that so I've got my list and we are gonna take this and go shopping I'm looking for filet mignon center-cut I'm going by size because I'm thinking of like that specific plate that I know from the Test Kitchen and I want to kind of match it pretty exactly you know to the width it's got to be that meat it was like it was lean it was super tender that's beautiful I'm just getting some regular ham because at the end of the day I think this will get close in terms of texture could I have a half pound medium thin slice of the prosciutto de Parma one click less one click last a little better thank you cool thanks all right eggs for our egg wash butter so I'm getting just a whole bunch of cremini mushrooms here they just have like a very earthy neutral flavor I want some time I'm gonna get some beef broth and we are gonna get puff pastry this is stuff [Music] just got back from the supermarket yeah I think we're ready to hit this so I'm just gonna trim some of these up oh boy man down I'm not into this we're gonna go by hands feel like the mushroom needs to have like a little bit of texture to it and that was just pretty upsetting like how slimy that was getting I just want it like really ultrafine we're not trying to put color on this I just want to cook it out lots of liquid coming out here I'm just doing a cracked clove of garlic and thyme I feel like I was tasting time in the in the duck cell let's assume there's like a little garlic and thyme in there I got to kind of hedge my bets a little bit here I want to get some garlic flavor in there but I just I don't think I want tons of it so in mushroom duxelle I feel like more typically find like white wine I feel like I taste it a little bit of that like brightness to it [Music] I just want to cook this out I'm gonna hit this with a little more salt just a touch of pepper I don't want it to be overwhelming so tasty so flavorful confidence in terms of flavor high to very high I'm gonna let this cool and I'm gonna get going with my little red wine reduction just gonna do one shallot I'm not going for a color on the shallots I just want to sweat them out develop their sweetness I'm gonna put in some red wine here I'm getting like white wine maybe it's red wine while I'm cooking that out I'm gonna check out my puff pastry see do I want to go to here I need some to cover the edges I'm going to roll out the puff pastry for today I'm not gonna sear off the meat in any way before putting it into our puff pastry package I imagine the puff pastry shell you know is gonna need maybe like 30 minutes I could be in a situation with that size you know roughly piece of filet that it's gonna then overcook while I'm waiting for the puff pastry to turn golden and cook through does that make sense I felt like I tasted the flavors of what was going on around the beef but I didn't taste anything other than perhaps salt and pepper on the meat one thing that was really messing me up this morning was the order of the layers all right Brad come here I'm thinking puffs prosciutto spread the duxelle right on the prosciutto after its laid out on the puffy throw and then beef really roll yeah did you ever put the duck cell against the puff and then put the ham on top of that and then the beef I like the idea of the prosciutto being a little bit of a barrier I mean you want to control the moisture saturation in the puff I like that now you're using the noodle and then what's the plan you roll this bad boy up and then bake it off raw I think so no sear I don't know that's where I've been going back and forth but anyway we're gonna keep going and assemble this I don't know Brad seem to be into the we're going all in on prosciutto I want to get this pretty tight trim a tiny bit kind of put like a little bit of a crimp on it and then there was that distinct kind of nubbin edge to this this is gonna go into the fridge until very firm I'm gonna do quick egg wash this just helps the puff pastry pick up color so this is going into 400 oven cool I think we're gonna work on our sauce a little bit this is my reduction of shallot olive oil and wine I'm gonna adjust this with a little bit of our beef broth and see what that's doing flavor-wise I need to taste some sort of beef flavor just a few drops of red wine then the tiniest bit of acidity so I'm just going to see where we're not now Oh got some obvious problems here this ended up going we're gonna call that like 38 to 40 minutes at 425 part of what was tricky about tasting blindfolded this morning is I couldn't feel any obvious surface detail and I didn't feel any obvious scoring certainly did not see the friggin Grand Canyon in the one this morning I can hopefully correct that by just docking so it's like able to have some moisture escape I mean flavor-wise I feel okay about it can't quite tell about the ham I feel like it's it's giving me a similar level of like flavor and fog I have some things to think about tonight I used a little bit too much of that bone broth which is kind of flattening out the flavor of the wine I feel like I'm kind of like circling around it a little bit ready for the second tasting just trying to get a little bit of clarity on a few key points and I'm hoping this does it because frankly if it doesn't I'm not sure where that puts me yes so this thing is like positively cute compared to that the Hemus that I just pulled out of the oven my cut of meat was one pound seven ounce and I think for the next one I'm just gonna do a pound I'm gonna lean on the idea that this is docked I'm also going to lean on the idea that this is a thinner coating of pastry than I used the meat feels a little bit less done than this morning it's mushroom around the meat so then this this is the big question right this is a cured meat product everything just feels like a little finer a little tighter a little smaller the way it's shredding apart around the outer edge makes me feel like this potentially had an initial sear if I did an initial sear on this piece of meat then I could build the jus in that skillet on top of the fawn created by searing this meat at the end of the day like I don't think mine is like so different from this one feeling very confident about the meat feel good about flavors feeling much less good about the jus feeling like there's a lot of different ways to get there I'm somewhere between cognac and Redwine beef broth no beef broth I'm gonna have to do a few things tomorrow to try to get myself back to that place I want to call that like beef wellington but like to have like prosciutto in there that's that stuff to me it feels like old school kind of stodgy French cooking that's then like you know repurposed by the Brits and like are they putting prosciutto in there like I don't think so I'm sure however close I might come they're still going to be differences and like that's just cooking regarding the mushroom you know I'm not really changing anything from yesterday other than the fact that I'm just making more of it at least I don't have to cook it blindfolded just gonna let this cool well I think about sauce I'm gonna do some shallots so I'm trying to different methods for building it both starting with sweated shallots but then adding brandy in one case and red wine in the other just seems like a pretty French thing to do the light stuff on fire I'm just gonna put like a quarter cup of beef broth in there so in this pot right now I have shallots sweated out an olive oil red wine reduced by about half and I have just a splash of beef broth this is shallot sweated in olive oil and then just deglazed with brandy the con yakin is completely missing the fruit quality and the Redwine version here I'm gonna throw some red wine in on top of the cognac version we're now gonna call this our con yak wine hybrid this demean tastes the closest I'll see where we end up all right we're gonna sear this piece of meat I really don't want to cook the meat through all I'm trying to do right now is put a pretty light sear on this piece of meat just getting like a little bit of color on that fat I think is gonna help me flavor-wise okay flavors been developed a little bit I'm gonna put some shallot in on top of this and build my sauce always good to add your alcohol off heat now I'm gonna do red wine so we're gonna let this reduce by half but I think we're ready to assemble package number two after tasting it yesterday I feel really good about the fact that we've got pastry prosciutto then mushroom and then meat going in there I'm not sure this is how I wouldn't necessarily do this but this is what I felt like I was experiencing so I'm gonna chill this size-wise I think we're definitely looking a little better here so again I'm gonna egg wash it the other thing that I'm doing today that I definitely didn't do yesterday is docking the pastry which means to kind of prick it all over it just helps the steam inside escape do I feel like there's anything on top I feel like no Oh flaky salt into the other I'm not gonna check on it for 25 minutes that'll be my first town all right so everybody who's screwing around so we ended up creeping up to 44 minutes here but I turned the heat down from 425 to 375 so obviously the pastry split again and it's a super bummer there needs to be more aggressive slashes or docking on the pastry in order to allow more steam to escape this is the second time I've had a seam open up I think there's just too much steam inside trying to get out forcing it open did the other one who definitely wasn't seal over there I was like what if there were like steam edges over here and then it wouldn't have to affect you wouldn't have to be like slashing the top is it like an end vent is that like a thing I don't know let's cut this thing open sorry I gotta get this what are you doing I'm just getting this for the gram so again going maybe even a touch thinner with the pastry otherwise you know I'm feeling pretty good about this my producers inform me that I have two hours to get the next one in and out of the oven and ready to go for Carla to taste so it on kind of all comes down to this [Music] going into the fridge just want to cool that down keep it next to andis weird old containers of stuff that he didn't deal with before he went to Mexico I've been feeling pretty good about the pastry itself right now I just trying to make it a little bit thinner feel like size-wise we are closer than we've ever been before so I'm gonna get this in the freezer and then we're gonna go into the oven this is our last chance really struggling with the fact that I didn't detect deep slashes in the original dish so it's freaking me out a little bit I'm gonna start by like very lightly scoring it worst-case scenario is just that it looks like garbage and stuff leaks everywhere but whatever happens in the oven with this thing that's what I have to serve to Carla so yeah I'm just hoping this kind of works out anyway sauce I'm basically gonna use my sauce from earlier because I don't want to take the time to make another one a quarter of a cup of the broth yesterday I ended up adjusting mine with a little bit of red wine vinegar it's possible that it was adjusted on the back end with like just a touch of vinegar I don't know I don't know if I need it here yesterday I felt like I'd put a little bit too much butter in the sauce so I'm just putting a small amount just to give a little bit more body I think this is pretty close so I think this is it so I'm gonna get this off onto a rack final ingredients if I could do it another time I would do like very light scoring so you get more of this effect without opening it up to the mushroom mixture below overall I mean I think I'm at like 90% yeah I'm ready this is so exciting Chris okay I would like to present to you Gordon Ramsay's beef wellington Oh Gordo all right I'd like to present you I feel like we're getting very close so one of the first things I'm noticing is there's a size differential so I think the target of course is in grams but it's a little less than a pound and it looks like you went closer to a pound and a half yeah the scoring it's obviously much deeper he just does a light surface scoring and it's really decorative yes whereas I think you were connecting the scoring to the technical challenges which is the cooking of the internal and the external with getting a pastry right and not sagging out yeah this is one that like honestly I'd be fascinated to take another crack at you know kind of knowing obviously what I know now all right let's get into it let's do it you ready oh very nice you're medium rare rare the mushroom here is a little bit finer it feels like it was food processed which like with your hand chopped I ended up hand chopping and what kind of mushroom did for me me okay I think we need to taste them yeah you know I need a refresher mm-hmm very beefy beef that was the one thing I was like yes definitely gonna get that speed yeah I'm gonna take my first bite of yours it did have a very nice crispiness cutting through the pastry I just wanna I want you to know that thank you then different a little bit different lacks a little bit of sweetness the texture of the mushroom is totally different I cooked mine with a mixture of olive oil butter and then threw in time garlic and white wine oh there's thyme leaves in Gordon's recipe so they're finally blitzed in there so you don't know Austin and then there's no acidity used you use white wine I really thought I detected like a little brightness in there yeah there were certain judgments I made as a cook where I was just like I don't want mushroom paste at Berkshire but should I've just like followed the spirit of the exercise and just made mushroom taste I mean when you're trying to match it exactly no but like I don't got a resist I know I said like there's a good possibility that he might make a better version did you season and sear or did you just season and wrap the first one I seasoned and just went right to wrap the next one I seasoned and I seared that is correct but not to cook just to get no just to get just to get color all right let's taste the sauces visually they're a little bit different so the major difference between the two comes down to flavor development he trims the fillet to make it nice and neat and actually uses those trimmings to make the sauce the other thing he does is he uses red wine vinegar and there's also bay leaf and thyme yeah I did wonder about an herb in there haha I don't get the bay it at all so shallot jack is a-- all right the red wine vinegar red wine you had red wine red wine yes and sure and a good stock I couldn't have done any of this so let's just take a step back it tastes amazing it looked incredible so like thank you for living up to my thank you expectations which are generally that you're gonna be amazing Thanks have a great weekend rest easy you deserve that the thing about tasting something blindfolded is that you stop trusting anything you really have to rely on senses that you don't always let yourself lean on too hard had a couple small issues here there's a size differential lacks a little bit of sweetness the texture of the mushroom was totally different yeah because I Frank but honestly overall I'm gonna call this a big victory and I'm ready for the next challenge my pocket what's up with the mood lighting

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 5,776,775

Rating: 4.9338994 out of 5

Keywords: chris morocco, beef wellington, chris bon appetit, chris makes, chris makes beef wellington, beef wellington gordon ramsay, gordon ramsay beef wellington, beef wellington bon appetit, make beef wellington, makes beef wellington, making beef wellington, beef wellington recipe, reverse engineer, blind cooking, blindfold cooking, chris morocco blind cooking, taste test, chris taste tests, cooking challenge, blindfold cooking challenge, taste testing, food, bon appetit

Id: 3eVMgUrEazA

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fennesz]

Inject quality BA content directly into my veins.

[u/Cababa]

Bon Appetit is on a streak! They are killing it with all this crazy concepts instead of just showing you how to cook recipes. It really shows that they guys are serious pros.

This was like Claire's series dialed up to eleven! Hope to see him tackle some other more complex dishes, he looks to be the best taster of the bunch, if you see in the other videos, everyone comes to him to ask for flavor corrections.

[u/Kraz31]

Old school stodgy French cooking repurposed by the Brits.

Pretty close to describing Gordon Ramsay and he didn't even know it.

[u/[deleted]]

BA has really stumbled on a great format and cast of people

[u/Honda_TypeR]

This guys tasting ability is so on point he even partially predicted who the chef was.

"I wanna call it beef wellington, but to have prosciutto in there? That's messed up to me! It feels like old school stogey french cooking, but then is like... repurposed by the brits"

This kinda sums up Ramsay's cooking style.

Gordon's style pretty much is learned from his mentor Marco Pierre White who is also British, but cooked in French and Italian styles (Italian cooking influence would explain the prosciutto usage too). Even though White was Italian heritage he learned from old school French chefs. I'd bet a dollar to a donut this Beef Wellington recipe is a clone or close variation of the one his mentor taught him years ago.

[u/thelatedent]

The Bon Appetite social team has been putting in some real work around here recently and I'm fine with it.

[u/pedestrianhomocide]

Do I smell a new popular series spearheaded by Chris? YES!

I think next time they should grab an outside party and let them eat it blind-folded and see what they think about it.

[u/BigHaircutPrime]

A very fascinating video. At first I was like, "okay if you're a chef and don't know Gordon's famous Beef Wellington recipe, you've almost got to turn in your apron." But then I realized that the challenge was in all of the subtle flavors. I already knew the four main ingredients, but I would have screwed up the technical aspect so badly that my end result would have been extremely bland (and probably overcooked).

[u/Crusnik909]

This needs to be a new series! Molly just got one and it suits her well but this is like it's written for Chris!