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

Hi guys, I'm 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

taste

r abilities. This is Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington. Chris has two days to replicate this exact dish and he will be able to. to smell it, he will be able to touch it and

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 go back and taste your final creation and I will be the judge, there is a Yorkshire pudding aroma to this, it is like a toasty, earthy, slightly sweet aroma, like some sort of savory thing that is wrapped in a very rich kind of dough, do I feel like there's something on top?

I feel like no, oh, flaky salt, sneaky girl, that cake doesn't break apart as I check it. You know you have this roughly circular piece of meat and it makes sense to me that this is

beef

. something else on this layer here feels like Pam or something. I can't tell if the meat itself tastes like standard ham or if that's actually like the realm of prosciutto or something I'll get into. this filet mignon

beef

situation there's this layer of stuff there's something really intensely earthy about that layer I think we're going to go ahead and call that mushroom suppose there's like a little bit of 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 something real like a snap with acid it may have been adjusted on the back with just a touch of vinegar how was this actually built?

It was a piece of raw meat simply placed in this. pastry case and then baked or quickly browned in a pan. If I had to guess right now, I'd say this is like a beef

wellington

, but what is beef

wellington

like? I can't remember what beef wellington is. like a name I know who, okay, there's like the pastry element, puff pastry, the meats, the steak, the ham, that sure bothers me, but I think I could get a couple of options, mushroom broth, white wine, red wine and shallot with garlic butter. I'm going to need flake salt a couple of eggs for an egg bath.

I feel pretty good about it, so I have my list and let's grab this and go shopping. I'm looking for center cut filet mignon. I'm going by size because I'm thinking about that specific dish that I know from Test Kitchen and I want it to match exactly, you know, how wide that meat has to be, it was lean, it was super tender. That is beautiful. I'm just going to buy regular ham because at the end of the day I think it'll be close in terms of texture. Could I have a half pound of medium thin slice of Parma prosciutto?

One less click. One click lasts a little better. thanks great thanks okay eggs for our butter for whipping eggs so I'm going to buy a bunch of cremini mushrooms here they have a very earthy neutral flavor. I want some time. I'm going to get some beef broth and let's get some puff pastry, this is something I just got back from the supermarket, yeah, I think we're ready to accomplish this, so I'm just going to cut out some of these, oh boy, below, I don't like this, we'll go with our hands. I feel like the mushroom needs to have a bit of texture and that was quite annoying because of how slimy it was getting.

I just want it like really ultra thin. We're not trying to color it. I just want to cook it. A lot of liquid comes out here. I'm just doing a clove of garlic and cracked thyme. I feel like I'm savoring my time in the duck cell. Suppose there's some garlic and thyme in there. I have to cover up a little. I bet a little here. I want to give it a little bit of garlic flavor, but I don't think I want tons of it, so in mushroom duxelle I feel like I usually find white wine. I feel like I try it a little. who likes the brightness I just want to cook this I'm going to give it a little more salt just a touch of pepper I don't want it to be overpowering so tasty so tasty confidence in terms of flavor high to very high I'm going to let this cool and I'm going to continue with my small reduction of red wine.

I'm just going to make a shallot. I'm not going to color the shallots. I just want to sweat them so they develop their sweetness. I'm going to put some red wine in here. I'm getting like white wine maybe it's red wine while I'm cooking it. I'm going to check my puff pastry. Do I want to go here? I need a little to cover the edges. I'm going to roll out the puff pastry for today. I am not going to burn the meat in any way before putting it in our puff pastry package. I imagine the puff pastry shell, you know, will need maybe 30 minutes.

I could be in a situation with that size you know roughly a piece of steak that will then be overcooked while I wait for the pastry to brown and cook, does that make sense? I felt like I tasted the flavors of what was going on around the meat, but I didn't taste anything other than maybe salt and pepper on the meat. One thing that was really messing me up this morning was the layer order, okay Brad, come here. I'm thinking prosciutto puff pastries, spread the duxelle right on the prosciutto afterwards. It is placed on the puffed blanket and then the meat is actually rolled up.

Yes, have you ever put the duck cell against the puff pastry and then put the ham on top and then the meat? I like the idea of ​​the prosciutto being a bit of a barrier. I mean, you want to control the moisture saturation in the puff pastry. I like that now you're using the noodles and then what's the plan? You roll this bad boy up and then bake it raw. I don't think it browns, I don't know. where I've been going back and forth, but anyway let's go ahead and put this together. I don't know, Brad seems to like it, let's go for the prosciutto.

I want to leave this cut quite tight a little bit. like it got a little bit of a curl on it and then there was that distinctive kind of bumpy edge to it. This will go in the refrigerator until very firm. I'm going to do a quick egg wash, this just helps the puff pastry rise. color, so this is going to cool in the oven at 400°C. I think we're going to work on our sauce a little bit. This is my shallot, olive oil and wine reduction. I'm going to adjust this with some of our beef broth and see what it is.

Flavor-wise, I need to try some kind of meaty flavor, just a few drops of red wine and then a little bit of acidity, so I'm going to see where we're not at now. Oh, I have some obvious problems here, this ended up going. Let's call that 38 to 40 minutes at 425. Part of the tricky thing about testing blindfolded this morning is that I couldn't feel any obvious surface details and I didn't feel any obvious punctuation. I certainly didn't see the damn Grand Canyon. on this morning's one, I hope I can correct that by simply docking so some moisture can escape.

I mean, taste-wise, I feel good, I can't say that about the ham. I feel like it's giving me a similar level. of flavor and fog. I have some things to think about tonight. I used too much of that bone broth that flattens the flavor of the wine. I feel like I'm circling him a little. I'm ready for the second tasting, I'm just trying to get some clarity on some key points and I hope this does it because frankly if it doesn't I'm not sure where that puts me. Yes, so this is positive. nice compared to that, the Hemus that I just took out of the oven my cut of meat was one pound and seven ounces and I think for the next one I will only do one pound.

I'll lean on the idea that this is coupled. I'm also going to lean on the idea that this is a thinner layer of dough than what I used, the meat feels a little less cooked than this morning, there is fungus around the meat, so this is the big question, is it? Right? It is a curated product. meat product, everything feels a little thinner, a little tighter, a little smaller, the way it crumbles around the outside edge makes me feel like this potentially has an initial sear to it. If you were to do an initial sear on this piece of meat, then you could build the Solo in that pan on top of the fawn created by searing this meat at the end of the day.

I don't think mine is that different from this one. I feel very confident about meat. I feel good about the flavors. I feel much less good about meat. I just feel like there are a lot of different ways to get there. I'm somewhere between cognac and beef broth. No beef broth. I'll have to do some things tomorrow to try to get back to that place I want to call that. I eat beef wellington, but I like to have prosciutto in there, that's what to me feels like kind of old school heavy French cuisine that then, as you know, gets repurposed by the British and they tell you they're putting prosciutto in there, Like I don't believe it.

I'm sure no matter how close it is, there will still be differences and that's just something that's brewing regarding the fungus. You know, I'm not really going to change anything from yesterday, other than the fact that I'm just making more in. At least I don't have to cook it blindfolded, I'll just let it cool well. I think about the sauce. I'm going to make some shallots, so I'm trying different methods of preparing it, starting with sweated shallots but then adding brandy in one case. and red wine in the other seems quite a French thing to do to keep things light on the fire.

I'm going to put about a quarter cup of beef broth in there, so in this pot right now I have shallots sweated with red olive oil. It came reduced by about half and I only have a splash of beef broth, this is shallot sweated in olive oil and then simply deglazed with brandy. The con yakin completely lacks the quality of the fruit and the red wine version here I am going to add a little red wine. In addition to the cognac version, we will now call it our yak wine hybrid. ​​This degradation has the most similar flavor.

I'll see where we end up. Okay, let's brown this piece of meat. I don't really want to cook. The meat, all I'm trying to do right now is brown this piece of meat pretty lightly and get a little bit of color into that fat. I think it will help me flavor-wise, okay, the flavors have developed a little bit. I'm going to put some shallot on top of this and make my sauce. It is always good to add the alcohol from the fire. Now I'm going to make red wine, so we'll let this reduce by half, but I think we're ready. put together package number two after testing it yesterday.

I feel very good about the fact that we have puff pastry ham, then mushrooms, and then meat. I'm not sure how I wouldn't necessarily do this, but this is what I felt like I was experiencing, so I'm going to relax on the size. I think we definitely look a little better here, so again I'm going to do egg wash, the other thing I'm doing today that I definitely didn't do. What I did yesterday was dock the dough, which means poking it all over, it just helps the steam inside escape. I feel like there's something on top.

I feel like not. Oh, flaky salt on the other. I'm not going to review it for 25 minutes, that's going to be my first city, so everyone who's fucking around, we ended up going up to 44 minutes here, but I lowered the heat from 425 to 375, so obviously the dough broke again and it's a big bummer that there have to be more aggressive cuts or cuts in the dough to allow more steam to escape. This is the second time a seam has opened. I think there's too much steam inside trying to get out, forcing it open, the other one definitely?

It wasn't sealed there, I was like there were steam edges here and then it wouldn't have to affect you, it wouldn't have to be like cutting off the top, it's like an end vent, it's like a thing that I don't know, let's open this up, it I'm sorry, I have to understand this, what are you doing? I'm only buying this by the gram, so again, maybe even a little thinner with the dough, otherwise, you know, I feel very good about this, my producers inform me that I have two hours to get the next out of the oven and ready for Carla to try, so it all comes down to this: go to the refrigerator, I just want to cool it down, keep it next. to Andis, strange old containers with things he didn't work with before going to Mexico.

I've been feeling pretty good about the dough itself at this point. I'm just trying to make it a little thinner. I feel that in terms of size we are closer. than ever before, so I'm going to put this in the freezer and then we'll put it in the oven. This is our last chance. I'm really struggling with the fact that I didn't detect any deep cuts on the original plate, so it's scaring me a little. I'm going to start by rating it very lightly. The worst case scenario is that it looks like garbage and things drip everywhere, but whatever happens in the oven with this thing, that's what I have to serve Carla.

So yeah, I just hope this works anyway sauce. I'm basically going to use my sauce from before because I don't want to take the time to make another one. I finished a quarter cup of yesterday's broth. adjusting mine with a little bit of red wine vinegar it may have been adjusted on the back with like just a touch of vinegar I don't know I don't know if I need it here yesterday I felt like it would put a little too much butter in the sauce, so I'm just putting in a small amount just to give it a little more body.

I think this is pretty close, so I think this is it, so I'll put it in a grid at the end. ingredients if I could doAnother time I would like a scorevery light so you can get more of this effect without opening it up to the general mushroom mix below. I mean, I think I'm 90%, yeah, I'm ready, this is very exciting, Chris, okay. I would like to introduce you to Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington. Oh, Gordo, it's okay. I would like to introduce you. I feel like we're getting really close, so one of the first things I notice is that there's a size difference, so I think that's the goal. of course it's in grams but it weighs a little less than a pound and it looks like you got close to a pound and a half yes the scoring is obviously much deeper it just makes a score on the light surface and is very decorative yes , while I think you were connecting the score with the technical challenges, which is cooking the inside and the outside with getting the dough to turn out well and not sink, yeah, this is one that, honestly, I would be fascinated to try again, you know, know obviously what.

Now I know, okay, let's get into it, let's do it, you're ready, oh, very good, you're half cooked, the mushroom here is a little thinner, it feels like processed food, like you cut it by hand , I ended up cutting it by hand and What kind of mushroom was good for me? I think we have to try them. Yeah, you know, I need a refresher. The first bite of yours had a very nice crunch when cutting into the dough. I just want you to know that thank you. So different a little different. It lacks a little sweetness.

The texture of the mushroom is totally different. I cooked mine with an olive oil butter mixture and then added garlic and white wine at the same time. Oh, there's thyme leaves in Gordon's recipe, so they're eventually mixed in there, so you don't know Austin and then no acidity is used, you use white wine, I really thought. I detected a bit of brilliance there, yes, there were certain judgments I made as a cook where I said, I don't want mushroom pasta in Berkshire, but I should have followed the spirit of the exercise and just done the mushroom flavor.

I mean, when you try to match it exactly, no, but I have no resistance. I know I said there's a good chance he can make a better version. Did you season and brown or just season and wrap? The first one I seasoned and went straight to wrapping the next one I seasoned it and seared it that's right but not for cooking just to get not just to get just to get color okay let's try the sauces visually they're a little bit different . So the main difference between the two comes down to flavor development. Trim the steak so it's nice and clean and actually use 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. He was asking me about an herb there haha. I don't understand anything, so shallot is a... okay, red wine, vinegar, red wine, you had red wine, red wine, yes, and sure, and a good broth that I could. I haven't made any of this, so let's take a step back, it tastes amazing, it looked amazing, so thank you for living up to my expectations of gratitude, which are usually that you will be amazing. Thank you, have a great weekend, rest easy, you deserve it. that what happens with trying something blindfolded is that you stop trusting anything, you really have to trust the senses that you don't always rely on too much.

I had a couple of small problems. There is a size difference here. It lacks a little sweetness. The texture. of the mushroom was totally different, yes, because I'm Frank, but honestly, overall, I'll call this a big win and I'm ready for the next challenge, my pocketbook, what about the ambient lighting?