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The first time I did a Beef Wellington was for a Christmas dinner with family and friends. The recipe and methods seemed simple enough, but there were a few things I messed up that I thought I would share, here right after Christmas.
Parma Ham. Only from Parma, Italy. Some might say you can use prosciutto instead. I did. Next time I got the prosciutto sliced a little thicker (#2) and used more slices to get better coverage of the beef loin. I thought about using pastrami…hmmmm.
Pre-cooking. Some recipes don’t require it. I did sear the roasts, but I did no pre-cooking. Next time I pre-cooked for about 15 minutes to set the meat. This helped prevent a lot of juices from forming on the bottom crust and making it mushy.
Roasting time: About 45 minutes total is called for, but I found that many people won’t eat rare beef, so I cooked for an hour, total, till the center was at 140 degrees. This brought the meat to rare to medium rare on the inside and medium and medium rare on the ends.
Duxelle: Some recipes call for garlic, butter, salt, pepper, maybe some thyme. I found the duxelle didn’t quite hold up to the strength of the whole beef dish, so next time I used a stronger tasting mushroom (Portobello) or you could make a duxelle with a strong demi-glace, or maybe red wine reduction.
Mustard: Traditionally, an English Mustard is called for. What’s that? Country mustard, Dijon, brown…something with a lot of flavor. I used country mustard and I liked it, but I would consider using something with a little more bite, like Dijon.
Puff Pastry: I found that store bought pastry worked fine, but I had to stretch it out to fit the roast, which makes it a little less puffy. The next time, I made my own and it was really lovely. Some recipes say roll the pastry around the loin, some say use two sheets and crimp them. I used two sheets the first time, but really liked the look and the seal better with one large one and a rolling up technique.
Rack or Pan? The first time, I found that juices collected in the bottom of the roasting pan soaked the pastry and made a mess. With the combination of searing, pre-cooking, and using a screen-type rack, the next one was beautiful. I egg brushed the bottom crust as well as the top.
They say you can’t really be good at cooking something until you do it a few times. I find that there are kinks to work out in most recipes. Understanding some of the basic techniques will help us get through that. And you need to trust yourself. My first Wellington, I thought that it seemed strange not to use a rack, but I trusted the recipe and I shouldn’t have.
Hope you had a happy holiday season.
5:29 PM on January 7th, 2010
Thanks! Your solutions make a lot of sense and I like comparing the messed up recipe to how it works.