Think Beef Wellington Is Too Hard To Make? Think Again, Says Wyoming Chef

There’s a reason Gordon Ramsay’s famous beef Wellington costs $119 dollars and change per person.

First off, it’s a complex dish to make that marries high-quality ingredients in a visually stunning way. 

You take a beef tenderloin — the most expensive, most tender cut of beef around — and marry it to a luxurious mushroom duxelles. Then the whole thing is wrapped in a puff of buttery, flaky pastry, usually decorated with an elegant pattern, and then baked until golden outside and 105 degrees inside. 

Then this royal dish rests for 20 minutes, during which time it will rise to the temperature of a medium-rare steak.

As any chef will tell you, the original recipe that was the Duke of Wellington’s favorite is an intricate, time-consuming dish and a pain to prepare. But, done right, it’s massively impressive.

With a few smart changes, it doesn’t really have to be such a chore. And it can even be fun, as a small group of people who gathered recently at Cheyenne’s Railspur restaurant found out. They came to learn this fancy holiday classic from Juan Coronado, the restaurant’s co-owner and head chef.

Coronado likens beef Wellington to another classic dish he loves, the tamale. He calls them both labors of love. Time-consuming, but worth it. 

Like beef Wellington, though, tamales aren’t that difficult to make, he said. There are just multiple steps interspersed with multiple bouts of steaming. 

Coronado comes by his tamale making honestly. He learned all about making them not from culinary school, but from his grandma, cooking alongside her as a young man on an old wood stove.

“My tamale recipe is my grandmother’s,” he said. “And I started in high school, and figured I was OK at it. Then I started doing competitions, and it was something that I really enjoyed.”

That led him to cooking school in Denver, and to high-end restaurants like Panzano in the Mile High City. 

He found his way to Cheyenne in 2019 to The Metropolitan Downtown, but eventually opened his own restaurant with fellow chef, Seth Stefanik. Railspur has quickly become a culinary hotspot in Cheyenne. It’s located on the West Edge, in a part of downtown that was once considered blighted.

Class In Session

But you don’t have to be a chef with culinary training to make beef Wellington shine, Coronado said. In fact, all of the people who joined his class were pretty much rank amateurs, including this reporter. 

No one in the group had ever even tried to prepare beef Wellington before.

It’s just too complex and intimidating. A headache-inducing dish in most cookbooks, if ever there was one. It needed some tweaks to become fun. And that is exactly what Coronado brought to the beef Wellington table.

“This is all for myself,” Eli Vurgess declared during the class, joking a little, as he spread his seared beef tenderloin with a thick smear of tasty mustard. “I’m not making this for family. They don’t get this.”

He actually is going to share his newly acquired beef Wellington dish soon, though, at an upcoming dinner party with friends, where he plans to serve the most impressive dish he’s ever learned to make.

“I was telling them I’ve wanted to make one of these for the longest time,” he said. “But I never got the right cut of meat or didn’t get focused enough. And I always felt like I need to do it just right. I didn’t want to like do it halfway.”

Clay Van Houten and his daughter Savannah Van Houten, meanwhile, had been hearing friends talk about the cooking classes at Railspur and how much fun they are. 

So, when they saw the beef Wellington class they decided to just sign up and see what it’s all about.

“We’re doing this one tonight, and then we’re doing the one Thursday as well, the chocolate making,” Clay said. “That’s another one where we’re like, ‘It’s perfect for the holidays.’”

Kristin Harding, like Vurgess, has always wanted to learn to make beef Wellington, ever since seeing her stepmom make it. She and her stepmom have a friendly little rivalry going in their respective kitchens.

“She’s taken meat from our ranch and made beef Wellington for other family members,” Harding said. “But not for me. And so now I’m gonna be like, I’m gonna send (pictures) of mine to her.”

In fact, Harding was already taking some photos during the class, and even some videos with a sly little grin.

Harding took the class with her husband, Kiel. The couple own the Harding Ranch in Meriden, Wyoming, near Cheyenne, and they actually supplied all the delicious beef for the class. 

Kiel said the ranch jumped into direct-to-consumer sales during the pandemic, after receiving lots of calls from people who couldn’t find beef at the supermarket. 

Now they not only have a hundred or so loyal customers who order their beef online, but they also supply Coronado’s restaurant Railspur with high-quality beef that has been locally raised. 

A Slice Of Italy

Chef Coronado has his own little tricks to bring the flavor to his accessible beef Wellington recipe.

He recommends, for example, using authentic prosciutto di Parma above all others, which can usually be found in the deli section of a supermarket — if the grocer has it. This is a special kind of prosciutto produced in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and famous for its delicate, slightly sweet flavor. 

“The best ones I’ve had were from Parma,” he said. “They have these massive buildings, like houses, with these big doors, where they just have all the prosciutto hanging. Once a day, they open the doors for the Italian air to flow through there, and I just feel like it gets that flavor, every time you open those doors.”

Coronado loves to introduce people to new ingredients. It’s part of the food revolution he wants to bring to Wyoming, something he mentioned when he first came to Cheyenne in 2019 to open the Metropolitan.

“There’s an article out there that quotes me saying that,” Coronado said. “And I’m really proud to say that’s what we’ve done. There’s more food trucks that have opened. There’s more restaurants and I’ve seen more chefs who are out there. It’s getting more competitive in the culinary world here, and we’re getting more food, and I love that. It’s what I came here for.”

At some point, Coronado hopes to add a teaching kitchen to Railspur and start offering more next-level, interesting cooking classes. 

It’s OK to use another brand if you can’t find that one, Coronado added. That’s just the one he likes best.

The chef also likes to add a little sherry or Marsala wine to the mushroom duxelles as he’s sautéing it, for a little more flavor, as well as a bit of grated parmesan cheese at the end, once all the liquids have been cooked away. 

You don’t want any moisture left, or it could make the pastry soggy later. So, cook the duxelles long and slow.

Here Come The Cocktails

One nice thing about a beef Wellington prep party is there are plenty of resting stages that are perfect for munching on crudités and sipping on cocktails, or even eating a whole beef dinner.

That’s what we all got to do during Chef Coronado’s class.

Since Coronado had already prepared the duxelles for us, our prep work started with preparing the tenderloin itself. Cut off any thinner end portions, and remove any sinew, if needed. That just ensures uniform sizes, so that things will cook more evenly.

The end portions are perfect for something like a high-quality stir fry or sandwiches for later, so, obviously, don’t throw any of that away. Save the scraps.

Coronado recommends cutting the tenderloin into a one- or two-serving portion size for ease of handling in a home kitchen. These cuts are tied with butcher’s twine, to help it keep its shape. They look like little Christmas packages of meat. Apropos for a dish that’s, in itself, a holiday gift for whomever you prepare it for.

We took our little presents of meat to a grill station and gave them a nice sear on high heat and sprinkled them with coarse salt. Easy-peasy so far.

This step, by the way, is not about cooking the beef at all. It’s just a bit of kitchen chemistry called the Maillard reaction. Browning brings a nice umami flavor to most any dish, and it’s a step no chef would ever skip, especially when it comes to beef Wellington.

After the sear, cool the tenderloin for about the same amount of time it would take to break out those aforementioned cocktails and crudites. Sing a few Christmas carols, too, if you’re getting into the spirit of things. 

Once the tenderloin has cooled, remove the butcher’s twine and coat the tenderloins in a smear of English, Dijon, or other favorite mustard and set it aside. Lay out a couple slices of prosciutto on some plastic wrap in a roughly square shape that’s large enough to wrap your mustard-covered tenderloin, and then spread the prosciutto with a quarter-inch thick layer of the mushroom duxelles. When making duxelles, it’s very important to cook it long and slow. It should be soft and luxurious, like a thick paste, and water free.

Place the tenderloin in the center of the prosciutto-duxelles wrapper and roll it up tightly with the plastic wrap. Now it gets to chill for a while in the refrigerator. 

Just long enough for one more little cocktail.

C’mon, what could it hurt?

How Chefs Cheat

So, the next part of this beef Wellington dish seems like it could be the tricky part. Wrapping everything up in pastry, then decorating said pastry with an elegant pattern. 

Hope you didn’t have too many cocktails!

But it turns out, it’s not all that difficult. It’s just as easy-peasy as the rest of the class has been. And that’s because Chef Coronado knows how to cheat!

Not in any way that hurts the food. But in ways that save time and make things much more fun.

The first cheat is rather obvious. Just buy commercially prepared puff pastry. Puff pastry isn’t really worth making homemade for most people. It’s an obscure art and science, best left to the likes of heavenly angels, blessed saints and determined chefs.

So lay your cheat sheet of puff pastry out and then kind of roll it gently around the tenderloin to see how much of it is really needed. Make a mark where you’ll make your cut, then reserve that left-over pastry for the next step.

After wrapping the tenderloin up so that it’s in its own little tube of pastry, pinch the ends up close to the steak. It will now look just a little bit like a giant piece of candy, wrapped in pastry. Trim most of the ends off this pastry wrapper and tuck what remains under the beef Wellington. That makes a nice, neat little package.  Wash this with some beaten egg yolk to enhance the golden color when baked.

Now comes the tricky part perhaps … decorating that puff pastry package with a lattice. 

But actually as, it turns out, it’s not that tricky at all. Chef Coronado has yet another cheat. A handy little roller that cuts the pie lattice in one easy step. Who knew?

Now we have discovered the secret to how all those pie crusts on the cover of food magazines look so dang perfect every time. 

These gadgets aren’t even very expensive. Amazon has them for $11.99 and up. Any good kitchen shop in your neighborhood would likely also have them for an inexpensive price. 

So, if you don’t have one, go get one right now. We’ll wait until you get back.

Maybe even drink another cocktail while we wait …

One Fell Swoop

OK, so now you’re good and ready to go with your own little pie lattice cutter. It will feel a bit like you are using a pizza cutter, but you want to press hard enough to make your lattice cut in a single go. It’s just too difficult to line everything up for a second go. 

Especially after how many cocktails was it?

After the cut, gently pull and stretch out the pastry and voila. Instant pie lattice. No effort at all.

Now wrap the lattice gently around the tenderloin just like you did the puff pastry sheet. Trim off the ends, and tuck everything under the beef Wellington package. Give it all another egg wash for good measure. You want it to look like pure gold on a plate.

At this point, the beef Wellington can be baked to the temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Rest it for 20 minutes. The temperature will rise during the resting phase, reaching medium-rare temperature. It can also be held overnight and then baked. 

If you want to hold it longer than that, you could also freeze the beef Wellington for later use. In that case, be sure to thaw them out all the way before baking.

Bon appetite and Merry Christmas or Happy New Year.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.