- 1 hour ago
Bon Appétit joins Chef TJ Hoy, Chef de Cuisine at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn, to make their famous Beef Wellington. From seasoning and searing prime filet mignon to preparing mushroom duxelles and pâté brisée pastry, learn essential techniques for preventing soggy pastry, controlling moisture, and achieving a perfectly medium-rare center.
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00:00I'm TJ Hoy, I'm the CDC here at Gaijin Tolner, and today I'm going to show you how I make our
00:08perfect beef wellington. Gaijin Tolner is a historic restaurant in the heart of downtown
00:13Brooklyn. Beef wellington is one of those dishes that are really special to us. It's a holiday
00:18tradition, but we celebrate it all year round. Our perfect beef wellington, it's beautiful layers of
00:23pate brie, house-cured bacon, mushroom duxelle, cream swiss chard, mustard, and a nice prime
00:30filet mignon all wrapped into this beautiful dough. Each component you got to make separately. It's
00:35really a labor of love. It was created for the kings and the dukes. It may seem pretty intimidating to
00:41make, but really what it boils down to is you're making a really big, delicious hot pocket. To
00:46kick it off, we're going to start with the beef. The beef that we're using today is a
00:5310 ounce cut of prime filet mignon. Nicely marbled, but not overly fatty. An overly fatty cut like a
01:00ribeye, a New York strip, all that fat while it's in the oven is going to render out and make your dough
01:05soggy. Our end result is going to be a crispy, nice crusty dough wrapped over the filet mignon. So every
01:11component today, we just got to keep in mind that moisture is our enemy. So you want to use a leaner
01:17cut. Beef wellington, usually it's a nice big piece that feeds six to eight to ten, but we do it so
01:22that it's for one to two people. We're doing a really simple seasoning here. A nice sea salt,
01:27kosher salt. I like more of the coarse crystals. It takes a little bit longer to dissolve. Not too
01:33high, but nice and high so we get an even coating. Top to bottom to back to front. Fresh ground black
01:39pepper. Same thing with the salt and you want to just kind of get a nice little coat. Cover all sides
01:44and then we're just going to let it sit for five minutes while we get our pan hot. I'm just going to add a
01:48little oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Let the oil heat up. Takes a couple minutes. Biggest
01:54mistakes that people make is not getting the pan hot enough to create that initial crust. You want
01:59to use a neutral oil that has a high smoking point. I use a sunflower oil. See it kind of starting to
02:06smoke a little bit. Then you know you're ready to go. You just take your piece of meat and you start
02:10with one side. Give it a nice little push down and just let it rest there for a while. If you look around
02:16the bottom edges here, you see that mariage reaction starting. So nice and brown. Also,
02:21it's going to be kind of loose on the pan. But once you see that brown starting to happen on the bottom,
02:26you know you're just about there. We're going to be doing this over and over again today. Season,
02:30cook, and cool. Season, cook, and cool. Just to get that final product that we need. You got a nice
02:36little crust there. It's still a little brown in the middle. So I'm going to leave it there for another
02:40minute. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is not letting it sit long enough to get that nice
02:46sear. You want to let it sit there. You're not going to hurt it. So this is just about perfect. Maybe a
02:51little bit over. Each side is going to get quicker. The first side takes the longest. So I've seared on
02:56all the sides. We have a nice golden brown all the way around. From there, we're going to pop it in the
03:01cooler. It's all about the rhythm. Season, cook, and cool. Beef is all ready to go. So now we're going to move
03:06on to the mushrooms. Duxelles is that French fantasy term for mushroom paste. Classic Duxelles,
03:16it's usually crimini mushrooms chopped up really fine. Sweat it out with some shallots, a little
03:20white wine, maybe some herbs. We do a little bit of a spin on it. So along with the shallots,
03:24we add some finely chopped leeks, a little bit of garlic, and a parsnip for a little bit of sweetness.
03:31We have beautiful maitake mushrooms, beech mushrooms or monsumijis, king trumpets,
03:37and then your good old button mushroom or crimini mushroom. I've taken all these ingredients already
03:42and I've put them all separately through a food processor to get them as small as possible. So now
03:50we're going to go get it on the stove. We're going to add a splash of neutral oil and then I'm going to
03:55add a little bit of butter. The oil has a higher smoking point. Combining the two, you're going to
04:00give the butter a higher smoking point. First, finely chopped shallots. We want to get these into the pan
04:05evenly as possible. Shallots add an onion flavor plus a little bit of sweetness to the mushrooms.
04:12We don't want to get any color on it, so you want to adjust the heat. And while that's about halfway done,
04:17we're going to add our finely chopped leeks. This is adding more of a fresh onion element, chopped garlic.
04:23It's not traditional, but come on, who doesn't love garlic? This smells delicious right now. Next,
04:30we're going to add parsnips, which adds a nice level of sweetness to this dish. So you want to get that
04:35sweated out a little bit. And then we're going to add our mushrooms, the star of the show here.
04:42I'm sweating this out a little bit and you can see that it's starting to get dry because the fond is
04:46starting to build up on the bottom of the pan. Fond is the natural sugars adhering to the bottom of the pan.
04:52For this, we want to add a little bit of white wine to deglaze the bottom of the pan. I know we're
04:57trying to pull out the moisture, but adding a little moisture is going to create more of a richness
05:02and a more depth of flavor. I also like to throw a couple of bay leaves in just to give that extra
05:07layer of flavor and a little more sweetness to it. It's probably going to take about like 10,
05:1115 minutes to get to that consistency that you want. We are just about there. It's starting to stick
05:17to the bottom of the pan again. That means we're almost out of all our moisture and we are going
05:21to transfer it to a separate container so it could cool. The colder you keep everything,
05:27the better it's going to come out. Having everything too warm will make the dough melt and
05:32you'll get a thin dough that doesn't puff. So we're going to get this in the cooler and then we're on to
05:36the swiss char. This is not a traditional addition to a wellington. Most wellingtons will have a fatty
05:46pate element to it either like foie gras or like a chicken liver. This is our play on that fat element.
05:53So we're going to start with our fat in the bottom of the pan. Let that heat up a little bit over like
05:58a medium low heat. We're going to add some of our butter for extra flavor and a little more fattiness
06:04and we're going to get that melted in the oil here. Once that butter is all melted in that pan,
06:10we're going to add our thinly sliced onions so I get that a nice even layer. So we're sweating, not sauteing.
06:18Sweating is pulling the moisture out and making them tender again over a medium heat so we don't burn it.
06:24So when we're about halfway sweated out with these onions, we're going to add our sliced garlic. Season
06:30as you go. The salt helps to draw the moisture out of the onions and garlic. Next, our swiss char.
06:38Swiss char is a hearty leafy green. We leave it on the stem. We just trim the ends. We give it a nice
06:45blanch in salted boiling water and then dunk it into an ice bath to cool it down and retain that color.
06:52We use a rainbow swiss char. So there's the reds and the yellows. There's still going to be a little
06:58bit of moisture in there, but the heat in this pan is what's going to have that evaporate. Next,
07:03I'm going to add a mixture of mustards. Here I have three quarters part Dijon to one quarter part
07:11whole grain mustard. I'm going to add all this to it. I'm going to add a little bit of white wine also.
07:17You see it almost immediately evaporated out of the pot, still dry on the bottom. And then we're
07:23adding our bechamel, a mixture of a roux and a scalded milk. That's basically our fat that we're
07:31adding to this mixture. We're not looking to really cook this anymore. We're just looking to warm it up
07:37so that it all could get incorporated. Traditionally in a beef wellington, mustard is used as a flavor
07:43component. We use the two different types because the Dijon has that spicy bite to it and the whole
07:50grain has that more mustardy dull bite with a little bit of crunch from the seeds. So I'm going to stop
07:57right there because I don't want to really cook everything. We're going to get this out of the
08:00pan. We're going to get it cool so we can get on to the next step.
08:03Every wellington usually has some kind of salty, umami, meaty element to it. Usually you find it
08:13like with prosciutto. We wanted to put our own little Gage and Toler spin on it. So we do our thin
08:19sliced house smoked and cured bacon. The bacon adds that saltiness, that umami with a little bit of smoke.
08:25You really want as thin as humanly possible.
08:28We're just going to take nice small chunks to wrap around our flame mignon.
08:36Bacon's all sliced and we are ready for assembly.
08:42All our products are cooked, cooled, seasoned, and ready to put together. For our pastry layer, we use a
08:50pata brie, which is a form of short crusts. At home, you're most likely going to use a puff pastry.
08:57Puff pastry just is made a little bit more delicately and laminated, so it has more layers and it's a
09:02little more fluffy. A pata brie is more of a pie crust, so very similar in flavor. This is already
09:09cut to the size that we need. All my ingredients are all right out of the fridge, very cold. We're
09:14going to start with our bacon layer. We want to take our bacon and cut it down to size if it's too big.
09:21We want it to come maybe a half inch from the edges so that it's not falling out of the dough
09:27after we roll it. We have our nice layer of bacon. It's going to be rotated over and flipped up,
09:32so that's going to be the top. We lay the bacon down first to create a barrier between
09:37the dough and our creamy Swiss char. Put a nice amount evenly spread so that we cover most of it,
09:45but not all the way to the edges. Our Swiss char is the most wet, so we want to create a barrier
09:51in between the dough and all the other components. And now we're going to go into our mushroom duxelles
09:57and then spread that over the Swiss char in a nice even layer. And then we move on to our
10:05filet of beef and we want to take our mustard mixture and we just want to kind of spread it
10:10all over that meat just so that we have even flavor throughout. We have a little bit of mustard in the
10:16Swiss char, but this is where we're getting most of our mustard flavor from. Now we're going to wrap it.
10:22So this can tear, so you just want to be really careful. So we're going to go from closest to you
10:28as far over as you can while keeping it tight to the meat. And then we're going to come the far away
10:35over to the top to overlap them just a little bit. You don't want too much extra dough.
10:40And then just seal that off with your finger. The heat from your finger will bind it together.
10:45And then we're going to flip it over, tuck in the edges, but make sure you go down so you don't have
10:51your seal up. And then we're going to spin that around because I like to do everything to my right
10:56and do that on the same side. We're going to come up, over and back down. There's no holes, no cracks.
11:06Looks like everything's pretty much sealed. If you see anything, you can pinch it together a little bit.
11:12Remember, you got to work quickly so that it doesn't warm up and it stays in an even form.
11:16But we're not done yet. We have to go that little bit extra. We decided on the lattice. It's very
11:21classic. We have this cool little lattice cutter that's multiple of wheels with sections that cut
11:26and don't cut. So we're going to carefully press it all the way through while pressing down.
11:30And that creates our lattice design. And we're just going to take that and then we're going to put
11:37this right over the top as even as possible so that it covers halfway down on both sides.
11:45And we're just going to give it a little bit of a press to seal it. And here we have our assembled
11:52Wellington. This has to chill for a while. So we're going to get this in the cooler. Once that's done chilling,
11:57we're going to make an egg wash and get it cooking. Now we have our assembled, ready, and chilled
12:02Wellington. You have your baking sheet and you just want to get a little bit of fat or oil on the
12:07bottom of it. We're going to make an egg wash to go over the top to get that nice even brown crust
12:12all around. You want to make sure that there are no strands left in the egg. I like to add a tad bit
12:19of water just to loosen it up so it spreads a little bit better. And so here it's a nice liquid form.
12:27You're not seeing any strands holding together from the egg at all. Take our pastry brush and we will
12:33brush all parts of it. Every side, all the way down to the bottom. My oven is preheating to 400 degrees.
12:42After we get that all egg washed, we're going to get this straight into the oven. As you might be thinking,
12:47how do you check the temperature on the inside? We have it down to a science of how long it needs
12:53to be in the oven at a certain temperature. But at home, probe thermometer that comes out of your oven
12:58and displays the internal temperature on the outside is probably your way to go. I would go from one of
13:03the ends and stick it straight in and put the crust around it so that there's no air holes for things to
13:12escape and evaporate. And you just leave it in there until it's completely done and completely
13:17cool. And then right before slicing it, you can pull it out. All right, let's do it. We're at our 20
13:24minute timer and we're going to get it out of the oven and let it sit and rest for about 10 minutes.
13:29The resting period is very important for when you're slicing into it, that it doesn't bleed out
13:34everywhere. The resting is going to help it finish cooking, plus redistribute the juices throughout the
13:42flame mignon. We're going to take our nice mashed potatoes and we're going to do a nice little bed
13:47for it to sit in. We top that with fien herbs, chives, parsley, tarragon, and chervil. It just gives
13:54that a little bit extra brightness and freshness to the dish. Find the center and you want to do a nice
14:01little slicing motion, pressing very softly. You're going to get a little bit of crumble. We just take
14:07our spatula, we get it into the bed of mashed potatoes. It's a really nice pairing to go along
14:15with the red wine demi and the wellington. And there you have it. By looking at it, you can see all your
14:21layers. The crust, nice flaky golden brown. I'm really excited about this. I get the earthiness of
14:31the mushrooms. I get a little bit of smokiness of the bacon. Get that nice buttery crispy crust and
14:37the beautiful meatiness of the flag with a hint of mustard and it all just kind of balances itself.
14:42This is perfect. Just remember with a wellington, you really want to focus on temperature and moisture.
14:48For temperature, everything needs to be cooled down to refrigerator temperature before assembling.
14:53With the moisture of everything, you want to keep it as dry as possible because that dough is just going
14:58to get all soggy. Don't be intimidated by Beef Wellington. It is worth the effort. It's worth
15:04the time. Whether it's during the holidays or any time of the year, it's just a fun little creative
15:09project to make it home.
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