Beef Wellington

Beef Wellington is a real treat and this recipe shows you how you can make a couple of variations. The Big Green Egg comes in to its own here, baking this perfectly while keeping in moisture and easily enabling a medium rare finish.

Traditionally the beef is surrounded with mushroom duxelles and prosciutto. I also have a recipe using chicken liver pate, spinach and prosciutto, which is my preferred way to serve it and a favourite with friends and family that have eaten it.

Serves 8

Method

For the Duxelles

• Melt the butter and add the shallot and garlic and sweat down gently.
• Finely chop the mushrooms, I find this is best done in a food processor.
• Add the mushrooms to the onion and garlic and fry down. This will take about 20 minutes.
• When all of the liquid has been evaporated out of the mushrooms and you are left with a paste, add the thyme and cook for a further 2 minutes.
• Take the duxelles mixture off the heat, add the brandy and put in a bowl.
• Cool in the fridge (preferably overnight).

For the Chicken liver pate

• Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the bay leaves, onion and garlic. Cook slowly to soften the onion and garlic.
• Add the thyme leaves once the onions have softened.
• Drain off any liquid from the chicken livers and add to the pan.
• Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. You’re looking to just cook the livers.
• Remove the bay leaves and move the cooked mixture to your food processor.
• Blend until smooth.
• Add the brandy and salt and pepper to taste.
• Place in the fridge to set in a bowl covered with cling film.

For the Beef Wellington

• Light your Egg and get it to 220°C with a cast iron pan or the Solidteknics Bigga pan.
• Sear the outside of your beef fillet turning regularly, you’re just trying to get some colour, not cook the beef.
• Once the beef has colour return it to the fridge to cool thoroughly.
• Place a piece of cling film on your kitchen surface and place the slices of prosciutto on top. Make sure the pieces overlap by about 1/3.
• Now add the pate of your choice, covering within 1cm of the edges of the prosciutto.
• Optionally cover the pate in a layer of spinach leaves.
• Add the cooled beef to the long edge and use the cling film to roll the pate and prosciutto around the fillet, keeping it tight.
• Fold any spare prosciutto around the ends of the fillet.
• Now carefully remove the cling film and place the roll on to one sheet of your puff pastry.
• Place a second sheet over the fillet and push down to expel as much air as you can. Trim the edges of the pastry to about 1 inch and then use a fork to seal it.
• Egg wash your Wellington.
• If you want, you can add a pastry lattice. Use a lattice cutter to cut your pastry and drape over your Wellington. Egg wash this. 
• Setup your Egg at 180°C in an indirect setup (ConvEGGtor feet up, stainless grid on top).
• Bake for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden. Use a probe thermometer such as the Thermapen to check the beef is at 48°C-50°C.
• Take off and rest for 15 minutes.
• Serve slicing 1.5cm slices, the beef should be pink.