Mini Beef Wellingtons

Oh boy.

This one's been on my bucket list for a little while, and what better time than 2 days before Christmas when my husband and I are trying to prepare for the holidays/a family trip?

The first thing I struggled with was the ingredients- if you know much about this recipe, a beef tenderloin (aka EXPENSIVE) is required. After some research I decided that eye of round would suffice, but wouldn't you know it... Sprouts was out. They did, however, have 2 smallish beef tenderloin filets for a much (?) lower price than a full tenderloin, so I decided we'd have minis. 

As I gathered the rest of the ingredients, I learned that Sprouts does not have puff pastry. Determined and completely unwilling to enter Walmart the day before Christmas Eve, I decided to make one from scratch. This was all my idea, btw. Zero pressure except for my own.

I got home and got to work. The puff pastry recipe I found required 2 cups of flour, a tbsp of sugar, 1/2 tsp of salt, and 8 tbsp of frozen butter, grated into the mixture. Once that's combined, I added 6 tbsp of ice water and kneaded the dough until it became *somewhat* doughy. I wasn't very confident about the consistency, but had no other choice so I molded it into a rectangle and placed it in the fridge for an hour, wrapped in plastic. 

Now for the beef. I had two filets which I cut in half and seasoned with salt and pepper and allowed to come down to room temperature. These are traditionally seared in oil- NOT cooked, it needs to be raw inside- for about 2 minutes per side. If you are using dijon mustard, now is the time when you'll coat the tenderloins with it. Neither of us like mustard, and my husband did not want horseradish, so I omitted this part completely as I learned that it's not totally necessary besides extra flavor. 

I then started the mushroom mixture: duxelles. I minced 2 shallots and 3 large garlic cloves and cooked them in butter on medium heat for a couple minutes. Once this was fragrant/translucent, I added the mushrooms which I chopped in a food processor- a sweet wedding present- after washing. The point of this is cook the moisture completely out of the mushrooms, which takes about 15-20 minutes. Once mine had been cooked for nearly 20 minutes, I added remaining mushrooms out of sheer desperation as it seemed there wasn't enough of the mixture for the wellingtons. 

Remember when I didn't want to go to a second location to get puff pastry? We did. 

The homemade version was a total dud. No shade to the creator of the recipe, but it just didn't work out when I followed it. We quickly ran to a nearby store and enjoyed the Christmas lights before returning with frozen puff pastry. I laid out 2 slices of prosciutto, added a layer of the mushroom mixture, then rolled a half filet up with plastic wrap and allowed it to cool in the fridge for 1 hour. 

In the meantime I questioned my choices up until now. 

Also, I threw together some mashed potatoes. I boiled a few yellow potatoes (I prefer them peeled, but peeling potatoes is the bane of my existence on top of the shenanigans I've already dealt with tonight, so unpeeled is fine) for about 20 minutes in heavily salted water until they were fork tender. I drained them and added milk, butter, and seasonings- s&p, garlic powder, white pepper, a smidge of paprika- and used a hand mixer to mash them up.

With the puff pastries thawed, I wrapped each filet like a burrito and added an egg wash before making a fun little pattern on top with the back of a butter knife (I was delusional at this point). They then went into a 425 degree oven for 25 minutes. 

After starting this meal at 3:45pm, it was 7:40pm when I pulled the wellies out of the oven. I was very discouraged because with 4 minutes left to go on the timer, I'd checked the internal temperature to find they were around 150 degrees rather than the preferred 130 for a perfect medium rare. To my surprise though- they were perfect when I sliced them in half for the classic money shot.