Beef Wellington Made Easy

i'm just gonna cut right to the chase today we're making a beef wellington and i know that's very daunting to a lot of people even potentially myself because we all know it's one of the hardest things out there that you can actually make or at least pull off in the correct way a lot of people would call the beef fullington gordon ramsay specialty and he's not the type of guy that you want to disappoint so that's why today when i make this beef wellington not only will i teach you how to make the proper beef wellington today i'll also be making literally every part i possibly can from scratch that's right all the way down to the mustard that we use to paint that beef everything is going to be homemade you don't have to make it all homemade but i know that beef online can already taste ridiculously good on its own why not try to make the better beef wellington now the most important part of a beef farmington of course is the beef and that's why i've got something special this thing that i got today is a weapon this big giant honker is a full american wagyu tenderloin now as you can see it's wider and bigger at this end and a little bit smaller at the tip here so i want to be basically cutting that part between my two hands to get that perfect piece and look at that we got all the seals of certification this is pure bread wagy beef now as i use in most of my videos this is from the wagyu shop and again it's never an ad but i always just toss that link in case you do want to grab me because given how much i cook with wagyu people ask me all the time where i get it and that's where i get it we genuinely truly don't have any sort of deal together but with that said we're starting with the best of the best right now japanese wagyu would be a bit too fatty to use for this because we're going to bake it in the oven in the end to get that perfect golden brown wellington and we don't want all that fat melting so for now this is what we got now while we let that tenderloin come up to temperature we're gonna start with what's called a dexcel that's spelled d-u-x-e-l-l-e-s it's essentially a fancy filling we're gonna make with mushrooms shallots garlic it's actually quite tasty and it's not too hard to make so don't let the name scare you to start i'm going to dump out a little over a pound of assorted mushrooms i had my mushroom guy go out and forage for some fun unique things here so just like anything else in the kitchen we're really not messing around after trimming down all our mushrooms and making sure we've taken off any of those unwanted stems we're going to start chopping you gotta know this ahead of time this part might get a little bit messy because we need to get these nice and small usually i just start to go for it now there's a few methods to chopping these mushrooms up because it's gonna take you a while my favorite way is to typically put two knives between my fingers and then just go like this up and down all my mushrooms to get those chopped up really nice and fine but another way i've seen people do it is to just go like this now that's definitely a little bit messier and the mushrooms fly all over the place but whatever it takes to get those down to a really fine small granule is what you need to do these are going to be used to essentially make this paste almost like an olive tapenade that'll be enveloping our wellington so they've got to be nice and small once your mushrooms have been nice and finely chopped your kitchen counter area is definitely going to be a bit of a mess but trust me your work here will be worth it these are nice small bits here and now we're ready to chop up those shallots and garlic for our shallots and garlic i typically like to do about two medium sized shallots and then just a couple cloves of that garlic for those of you that hate peeling off those little bits outside of each clove of garlic i got a trick for you simply take some sort of jar or a cup then cover it up and shake it's like the shake way once you open that up a bunch of the cloves should already be fully peeled and it makes your life so much easier another trick to get that garlicky smell off your hands once you're done is to rub your hands across something stainless steel like the head of your sink believe it or not that's the best way to get off that garlic smell now for the garlic since i don't like to cut on my cutting board and i'm also lazy again i'm just gonna put the cloves into my garlic press and go right into a bowl this will give us all that fresh garlic flavor without having to mess up our board and it makes our life a whole lot easier as for the shallots we just want to kind of chop those in the same way that we chop those mushrooms there doesn't have to be any special method here just make sure they're relatively all the same size so believe it or not with the shallots i know this recently happened on a video with onions but i've been cutting shallots long enough right now that i don't know i'm getting a little emotional again it's not the worst practice to practice chopping this with your eyes closed i feel bad crying in front of you guys like this so i'm sorry i'm sorry but wellington is a good food i'm just i'm getting a little bit emotional about it now that we have all that prepped out let's start cooking first we'll go a little bit of olive oil into a medium sized pan here now we're not going to wait for that to get hot immediately i'll toss in my garlic follow this right away with my shallots and then a nice sprinkle of salt because we always salt when we add garlic or onions now i'll turn my heat down to medium and evenly coat these to get these going it should get really nice and aromatic here make sure you're constantly scraping the sides of the pan so that nothing browns and burns once those have gotten nice and aromatic we're going gonna add in our mushrooms again make sure you're choosing a pan that'll fit all of these looks like i chose the perfect pan you can go with a little bit of thyme or some other seasonings and i always just like to add a few fresh bay leaves we're gonna take those out at the end and quite frankly they're a lot easier to remove than something like thyme so i like that they give some flavor without being a huge pain in the butt now on medium heat we're just gonna mix these around a little bit for about five to seven minutes until they give off some of their moisture similar to spinach this is going to reduce in volume in a few minutes once this is reduced down quite a bit you can see that our skillet's about half full now we're gonna add in just a little splash of red wine because to me that gives flavor unlike anything else and as you know red wine goes quite well with beef ah that looks so good we're not filming right no no now to finish off these mushrooms let's pull out all those bay leaves then add in just a little bit of pepper for some more seasoning and if you need it just a touch more salt your key here is going to be to have these as dry as possible because we don't want anything leaking out of our wellington this is really here to just provide tons of flavor so once these are nice and dried out you can set them aside while our mushrooms are rested off to the side now our next step's gonna be to make a few crepes this is actually becoming a pretty common thing to do in wellington because you need something in there that will help to absorb any of that extra leakage let's just say you didn't cook those mushrooms long enough this will hopefully save you into a large bowl we're gonna do two cups of all-purpose flour about two tablespoons of granulated sugar and just a nice little pinch of salt whisk this up until it's nice and well combined and then make a nice little well in the middle of your bowl next we're gonna crack in four eggs right into the middle of that well some might tell you to do it one at a time but i just like to do it all at once once those eggs are in there we're gonna whisk this up until it's nice and well combined still keeping the eggs in the center of that well and then we're gonna slowly drizzle in about three cups of whole milk just a little bit at a time funnily enough i make my crepes similar to the way i make homemade pasta using something like the well method to mix it all together keep in mind crepe batter is very thin so don't get alarmed if it seems a little bit thinner than your regular old pancake batter once it looks something like this you're ready to make those crepes now to cook these crepes in a large pan we're going to add a little hunk of butter and just let that melt down now once that's melted i'm going to go in with about a third cup of my nice smooth crepe batter and then quickly swirl this around my pan and try to get a nice even crepe then over medium heat we're gonna let this cook on this first side for about two minutes once that crepe is cooked on one side gently lift it up and give it a nice little flip don't worry if it gets a little mangled they're actually quite durable and you can just press it back into the middle of your pan then we'll cook in a minute more on this side and our crepe is done repeat this process until you have maybe four or five crepes just make sure you have enough to wrap that wellington and again this isn't a necessary step but i think it's really helpful you know technically i don't think it's kosher to get that color on a crepe when you're making it but to me there's nothing like getting that beautiful soft golden brownness oh god now for the last step before we finally work with that big fat tenderloin we're gonna make our own mustard because with the beef wellington you're gonna rub some dijon mustard right onto that beef itself now this is one of two things in this video that i did make ahead of time but don't worry i'm not just saying it's homemade it really is right here i have some yellow and brown mustard seeds last night i essentially combined these with some white vinegar some white wine a little allspice salt white pepper and onion that pretty much sits overnight in my fridge and what i have now can be blended down just a bit more to make a really nice dijon that can be more easily spread onto my wellington homemade mustard is really really tasty but again this wasn't an easy thing to do ahead of time so i made it ahead now and now i'm just going to pulse it up so you can see what this turns into you'll notice that many of those larger yellow and brown seas are suddenly going to turn into that more smooth dijon paste that you might see once i'm at this point here i'm pretty happy because you can see a lot of yellow there and this is ready to be spread i still want some of those small mustard seeds in there just to get that texture but as far as i'm concerned we're ready to go so let's bring out that tenderloin congratulations you've made it to the beef the first thing we're gonna do without damaging that beef is slice it open but because i know there's gonna be a lot of juice there i'm gonna put a paper towel down you always gotta be smart in the kitchen and all it takes is just a few messes not to mess it up again the next time i'll tear through the plastic to expose what's a beautiful beautiful tenderloin here and oh i like that logo with the cow it's pretty bad ass all right now it's all about finding that perfect piece i've been peeling off some of this fat but more importantly some of this silver skin that we really don't want in our wellington some of it like this is actually pretty easy to peel off and it'll just help so you don't get any of those nasty little bits when you go to eat i realize i just call this a wellington and it's a tenderloin but you get what i mean make it look pretty now if i flip it around you can see there's sort of a weird portion here that's not really attached to the main part i'm gonna cut that off because in reality i need this one nice uniform piece and to me that's looking like it's right here with a few nice clean cuts i'll come all the way through with my sharp chef's knife and now is where you can probably tell this is what a filet mignon would come from that's why wellington is so incredibly good now like i said we want it all nice and even and i can see that about right here it starts tapering off which means that for the other end of our wellington we're going to cut right here now i know we have a little piece of silver skin off here so i'll do my best to get a little bit of that off because again this is a luxury cut of meat and more importantly what we're making is a really luxury dish so we don't want people having to battle through this tough silver skin to try to eat a really nice soft piece of wellington now isn't it great that we've just trimmed down that whole large piece into this beautiful perfectly shaped piece that we're gonna put in our wellington as you can see on the sides here this is a perfect piece of beef like i said if i cut this into two or maybe three pieces here that'd be three portions of filet mignon but here we're leaving the whole piece intact and making that beautiful large wellington that we can cut into and open up for you to see now this is going to get cooked twice throughout this process first we're going to sear it off and before we do that we want to season it with just a little bit of salt or i should say a lot bit of salt making sure we get all around the entire thing including the bottom and then also hit it with a nice little serving of fresh cracked pepper which again is just providing even more flavor and is a key part of just seasoning all along the way once you've rolled that around in its seasonings a little bit this beautiful hunk of meat is ready to sear off [Music] first we're gonna add a little bit of oil that's got a high smoke point that's right it's time to sear off that tenderloin now once it does reach a smoke point we're gonna sear on each side for about a minute and 30 seconds or so depending on the size of your tenderloin maybe a little bit more but no less again we're cooking this more later so we don't want to overcook this right now or your wellington is totally screwed not actually but seriously just try to be careful with the searing here for now i'll place it into the pan there's going to be a lot of smoke [Music] our goal here is to get a nice crust as well as just lightly start cooking this thing before we go to cook it the rest of the way in our oven this is such a nice cut of meat that the wellington can be nice and rare when it comes out of the oven so i guess i should also say that if you like your meat on the more medium side of things maybe cook it a little longer in here because the oven you can't really control given you're gauging the cooking process based on the puff pastry on the outside you don't have so much wiggle room to leave it in the oven any longer or shorter there otherwise your puff pastry won't be golden brown once this is all set on the first side we're going to flip it onto the second side and let it sear more but first take a look at the crust that we've already gotten on here also take note on the edge of your tenderloin how much it's already cooked in because you want this to be even on all areas once that second side's done one more flip again about a minute and 30 seconds on this last side here then all we have to do is kiss those ends and this thing's ready to go there's going to be a lot of smoke at this point and i already know i'm going to shut off the fire alarm in my building but now kiss both ends of that wellington i'd say only about 30 seconds or so on each side and once that's done we're going to take it off the heat immediately uh look standing by itself now right away with your wellington sitting on a paper towel to catch any of those extra juices that might flow out we're going to paint the entire thing in our homemade dijon mustard i know most of you are probably gonna buy the mustard and i'm not gonna judge you for that i promise after all if you're daring to make homemade beef wellington you're already a pro and fearless in my book but my point here is to get a nice dijon mustard you've already spent your money on that nice tenderloin you've bottled the other ingredients so why skimp and use some crappy mustard it just doesn't make any sense when coating this make sure you really paint the entire thing similar to the salt and pepper you want to cover all sides of the wellington to get that flavor whenever we're cooking we're all about maximizing that flavor i'll roll this thing over and get that last side of our wellington usually you'll pretty quickly pick out what's going to be the bottom of your wellington and because this is the part of my wellington that seems to be splitting the most i'm going to use this as the bottom just so we can keep the nicest shape possible here once you've given it that full dijon mustard treatment we can assemble our wellington we're finally ready to layer on that wellington so first we're going to start with those crepes i've got a nice big stack of them going on here and because we have a really fat welly i think i'm going to use about three to make sure the whole thing wraps up okay our next step here is going to be layering on that prosciutto to be quite honest i question most foods and i've really never questioned why prosciutto is something that goes in wellington but i guess prosciutto is a really good tasting meat and i'm not mad that it's in here i more just wonder why next you already know we're going on with those mushrooms you just want to be layering these bad boys on in a nice thin layer but also put enough that you get all that mushroomy flavor because i have to say as weird as it looks this is one of my favorite things that goes into wellington you might not like mushrooms and i'll be honest i'm not even the biggest fan myself but this tastes incredible and now the moment you've all been waiting for down we go with that wellington keep that thing as tight as you can as we come up under those crepes and begin to roll make sure you really are bringing this in as tight as you possibly can here the final wellington's just gonna look so much better if everything's nice and tucked in now i'm gonna come in with my ridiculously large saran wrap or plastic wrap whatever you want to call it and that's when we tuck our wellington into a nice little sausage rolling it up again and keeping it as tight as possible in the process i'll do the same thing again with my plastic wrap really rolling up that wellington but more importantly getting some nice tails on there just so that i can cinch up those edges and make it really nice and tight in here this right here is the stage where our wellington goes to sleep for a little while it's basically that step just before we cook it where we want to give it a chance to firm up a little bit again and get into that nice oval shape that we want when we cut into it now that it's nice and wrapped up we'll place this in the refrigerator for about 45 minutes until it's firmed up now we want a really nice sauce with our wellington to me that's an extremely important part because yes your wellington's gonna be juicy but you want some nice sauce there who doesn't first i'm gonna go in with a little bit of butter let that melt down maybe even brown a little bit just for that extra flavor then come in with some thyme it's gonna crackle a lot but i like to put this in first to really let the butter zap that flavor out of there once this is cooked down just a little bit i'm gonna add in some shallots again those give such good flavor for a stock like this so i want to work those into this somehow saute these up just for a little bit not necessarily browning them but really just getting out that flavor and once that's nice and hot we'll go in with a little bit of red wine and once that wind's in there we flambe now i'm going to toss in my homemade bone stock i have been saving things for about three months all in my freezer onion peels extra onion bits and all the peels from the onions carrots celery anything that's going bad red peppers whatever check out this jiggle i let this stock go for about nine hours overnight and it is jiggly as can be which means there's a ton of collagen in there from all the bones now first this will be quite satisfying i'm gonna peel it right out of my bowl sorry sorry i'm getting carried away but seriously isn't that pretty cool how jiggly this stuff is i'm gonna drop this all into my pan and it's gonna quickly melt down to make our stock and while that melts i want to show you that right there is my proof like i said celery carrots onions parmesan rinds chicken bones beef bones we got everything in this thing and it all came down to this once this melts down we want to cook this off to really pump in all the flavor and get everything back together then we'll strain now before we reduce this down even further into a fine thick sauce for our wellington we'll pour this over a bowl and strain it out as we don't want any of those solid pieces now we can discard this and this will go back into our pan to reduce until it's a nice thick paste now for our puff pastry the last step before we put that wellington in the oven i guess i lied we're not making everything homemade today but honestly puff pastry is one of those things that pretty much no one makes homemade except for the person that's making this it's just one of those things that if you make it homemade it's not going to be any better than this right here and i genuinely believe that i'm not just saying that because we're not making this part homemade we're just going to roll this puff pastry sheet out a teeny bit here i generally roll this to about half the thickness that we get out of the package then you also want to go a little bit across so that it'll actually fit your whole wellington once you've done that give it a nice flip over to make sure it's all disconnected from your cutting board and then we'll bring that wellington out of the fridge once we take that wellington out of the fridge we'll want to quickly and gently unwrap it from this plastic wrap i will say plastic wrap typically isn't one of those things that i love to use in the kitchen although it's just a necessary thing for a lot of recipes once we unwrap the wellington let's place it down on the base of our puff pastry perfectly centered and then paint some egg wash which is essentially just a few egg yolks with a touch of water right under that puff pastry to make sure everything sticks really well i like to pretty much paint the entire inside of this thing and that way you're pretty well covered it's a whole lot better to just cover everything that have that worst case scenario of something not sticking and getting messed up when you roll it all together once we painted it all let's roll the whole thing up still keeping everything as tight as we possibly can then once we get to that last part we'll take our knife and make a nice clean cut across now we just want to pinch everything together and make sure that it's really well solidified here at this point this is going to be the bottom of our wellington but we still want it all well secured and the same thing goes for the corners here which will pinch together and then wrap somewhat like a dumpling if you want to you can even take a little square off the ends and go like that it actually looks kind of cute now i'll do the same pinching process on the other side of my wellington and perhaps put that same little cap on the end here to make it look nice and uniform then we can place it on our baking sheet here i just want to lift up quickly and place it down fast so that nothing breaks again we want to work quick here now at this point to get that nice golden brown shine we want to paint the entire wellington with egg wash again this is going to give it that beautiful golden brown color that we're all looking for so you really want to make sure you paint every last part of it if possible this is where you get that true beauty on your wellington and i know i've mentioned this before but i actually happen to really enjoy painting this kind of thing i don't know what it is but as someone who cooks all the time it's quite nice to just whip out a paint brush and start using that instead of your hands or a spoon if you have an extra sheet of puff pastry and happen to weirdly have one of these lattice rollers which i only have for making some dessert i made a while back you can put a really nice pattern on top of your wellington we'll start just above the very edge of it and while holding the back go all the way down my sheet here then with my knife i'll trim all the way down this puff pastry going gently down both sides here this will leave me with a beautiful lattice pattern that i can place over the top of my wellington i'll bring the tray back into frame here and now once we've spaced it out and have that perfect lattice pattern we'll lay this perfectly over our wellington pressing it lightly and tucking it around to make sure we get that perfect pattern all the way across once it's fully tucked in we'll take a small knife and trim everything to make sure that it fits right again this is definitely not a necessary step but we've come this far that why not make it perfect once we've fully tucked in our whole wellington we're gonna hit the whole thing once again with a little bit more of that egg wash making sure this is all pressed down and secured and also making sure that all that lattice pattern also gets the golden brown color and then there's only one more thing to do before it goes in the oven can you guess what it is i'll give you just a quick second here while i paint it to think about it if you haven't figured it out already just think seasoning that's right just a teeny bit of salt right over the top of the wellington here maybe hitting the sides as well to make sure that everything is covered in just a last little bit of salt and then we bake it i can't tell you how excited i am to say those words wow we're taking flaky salt to the next level with this stuff at this point i'm gonna put this in a 415 degree fahrenheit oven and honestly i can't really give you a strict time here you've worked all this time on it so after about maybe eight minutes or so start watching really carefully to pull it out when it's nice and golden brown guess i'll see you in a few minutes [Music] that's right we've made the most beautiful beef wellington beer but as they say it's what's on the inside that counts this may look gorgeous on the outside but if our meat on the inside isn't cooked to perfection then i will not be happy gordon won't be happy nobody will be happy so let's dive in too much pressure i need a sharp knife cannot mess this up and now oh god and now we have all waited for this moment i know i know so let's just do it come through that beautiful crust look at that golden brown perfection come right through that warm delicious tenderloin beef cut down and like i said we're looking for a nice rare here let's just open it up oh my god that looks good that looks good come on come on guys now hear me out here sometimes on camera things can look weird and from what i can tell right now this looks perfect but i'm just gonna say this the way that you test if you're making a wellington and want to know if it's perfect is simply by touching the very middle of that beef if it's nice and warm just like we have here then you've nailed that medium rare i am absolutely completely 100 blown away by the cook on this beef wellington and now it's time for the last hurrah eating it now to finish off this wellington i'm going to take a little slice and today i'm actually going to sit down and enjoy the food usually i really just kind of get after it you know just take a bunch of bites out of it while i'm still going but today we're going to sit down and actually talk through this thing to start i'm gonna take a nice thick slice through our wellington it's sometimes not the easiest thing in the world to cut but as you can see here i got a pretty darn good slice for the rest of our wellington i'm gonna move this off to the side you already know i'm eating that whole thing later now today let's give it a nice little plate i'll start by coming under the wellington and putting it nicely down on our plate here to me the black plate really lets you see the food well now to finish the plating here let's take a little bit of that reduced bone stock which is now that really sticky thick delicious glaze and we'll add a little bit right at the base of our wellington here just barely touching the edge and just enough to get enough sauce to enjoy this thing with now to finish it just to liven things up a little bit i like to sprinkle a few freshly chopped chives over my wellington and that's it this right here is the whole dish this is what we've worked for now yes i think you might be wondering why we have this small little plate off to the edge and you may have guessed it already that's for pesto if you don't know who that is that's my little hamster and i'm gonna give him a tiny little piece of the wellington put right there let's just got a little bit of that meat juice right under it then i will top that with one tiny piece of chive as he's not supposed to have much onion since it's a little bit spicy for him and then just two drops of that beautiful chicken glaze which he will absolutely love now it's time to sit down and enjoy now pesto is a very lucky hamster and he's crawling all over my hands already because he knows there's something special in front of him i've told this before but he was on sale so instead of twelve dollars he was actually only nine dollars and he always eats food that's a heck of a lot more expensive than him but i love him so much and those numbers don't really matter to me now i'm going to place pesto down and just let him enjoy right next to me so that we can have a really nice family meal together pesto give it a try and see what you think buddy i'm really curious to see your thoughts how is it you are right that is absolutely spectacular not only does it look beautiful but it tastes so good are you fresh already dude come on slow down a little bit enjoy it now there is something special about this beef wellington it is the softest most tender beef out there and i don't even need the chef's knife in fact it's probably dangerous to have it around pesto i can very easily use my little fork here just to cut this meal it's that tender and when i pick up a bite it's just like biting into a soft creamy pillow now it looks like pesto's finished his meal here but i've still got a ways to go so i hope he'll wait around while i finish up let's go after your plate this is my plate after a plate pesto keeps trying to eat my wellington i think it's time to put him back in his cage but he's proved his point here he loves the wellington thanks for being here buddy now i'm serious when i say there's something very special about the swellington it starts from that really incredibly soft and tender tenderloin on the inside there that's why they call it tenderloin after all but then you bite into those creamy mushrooms that beautiful blend with this slight hint of that red wine that's in there and it is so so good it's so so soft after that of course you're immediately hit with that crispy buttery delicious puff pastry think of biting into a croissant and then into a piece of filet mignon and that's what you're getting with the wellington but that doesn't even begin to describe all the flavors in here of course we have salt and pepper but it's so much more than that that sauce is what really brings it together save up your bones save up all those veggie scraps save up your parmesan cheese rinds i'm telling you then once in a while you toss it all in a big pot cover the whole thing with water maybe toss in a few bay leaves and a nice sprinkle of salt and just let that cook the further you reduce that the more flavor will be there and i'm telling you right now that it makes any stock from the market taste like i feel so bad for the neighbors when i do stuff like that because they can see right in the windows and it just must be terrible for them now i'm going to take one last little bite here but i really want to say that this video has been an absolute pleasure to make i really hope you all love this because a beef wellington isn't the easiest thing out there what i'm trying to show you is that you can do it seriously if you've watched this video you know how to make a beef wellington now and again you don't have to make it all from scratch so don't worry about that stuff here's the worst thing that happens you pull it out of the oven and maybe it's a little underdone press those babies back together and just shove it back in the oven for a few more minutes that's fine there's ways to get around all the user error that can come with making something like this but i'm telling you you can do it now thank you for watching the video this was such a fun one don't forget to hit that subscribe button and the notifications bell because you don't want to miss any of the videos that are coming up i was on the phone not long ago trying to get a 75 pound full wheel of parmesan cheese here just wait till we roll that through the door now this wellington is still hot as can be and i know i have some good heat tolerance but i can't yet hold this with my bare hands but all i wanted to say is thanks for watching happy cooking and i'll see you next time

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 1,741,104

Rating: 4.9427915 out of 5

Keywords: ultimate beef wellington, beef wellington, pork wellington, beef wellington recipe, chicken wellington, beef, wellington, wellington recipe, beef recipe, food porn, recipe, cooking, yummy food, yummy recipes, cook, food, chef, yummy beef, best beef, beef wellington tasty, gordon ramsay, beef wellington gordon ramsay recipe, asmr beef wellington, homemade beef wellington, cooking series, easy beef wellington, lattice beef wellington, how to make beef wellington, nick cooking, nick

Id: Wfrq_DLb8wI

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021