Beef Wellington Is Overrated, Make This Instead

What's up, dude? I'm just gonna come out and say, Beef Wellington is overrated. Sorry, Gordon, but it's true. All the time, the money, the skill, the patience, the practice to pull one off perfectly, and it's still just not that good. And one of the aspects you miss out on is that flavor-packed sear and crust you get from pan-frying a steak. And when you pair that with a worthy sauce, I think you have a dish that really blows Beef Wellington out of the water. And that's what I'm gonna show you how to do today. Now let's go! We're gonna start with our Gorgonzola sauce. It's pretty straightforward, and it packs a real punch in the flavor department. This is a great one to have in your cooking arsenal. Starting with a pot on medium heat, I'm gonna add my unsalted butter. A full tablespoon's worth, but the recipe will always be in the description under the video. Once that's melted, I'm gonna add in some finely diced shallots. Although, if all you have is onions, that is absolutely fine. Just make sure you've cut them as fine as possible as they kind of melt into the sauce, and it's just really good. Now you may be tempted to throw in some salt at this point, which usually I would do, but whenever you're cooking any recipe, keep track in your mind of how salty the ingredients used in the recipe are. For instance, in this recipe, the Gorgonzola, the Parmesan cheese, and the Dijon are all salty ingredients, so I really wanna wait till the end till I add any salt. And after just about five minutes, they have just a slight bit of color. I want this sauce to stay pretty white, so I don't want a lot of color. And now I'm adding my garlic, just sliced thinly. And we'll let this garlic cook down in here for about two minutes, and unlock its beautiful aroma. Next, I'm adding just a little bit of strip thyme. Just pulled off the stem just like that. And 30 seconds later, we're gonna add our white wine. It's just Pinot Grigio. And after about five minutes, it's cooked down pretty much all the way. You can see it's really thick and syrupy. At this point, I'm adding in my heavy cream. This is a creamy sauce. It's wintertime. Let the cream flow. Put on a little blubber. Then just bring your cream to a light simmer and cook it down for about four or five minutes. The next item we're gonna add is a little bit of Dijon mustard. And I'll show you a little trick here I like to use for sauces. Instead of putting the Dijon straight into the sauce, I'm gonna put a little bit of the sauce over the Dijon, and then take a little whisk or whatever you have, and just whisk it here first, and then add that back to the sauce. For some reason, when you try to dump Dijon straight into these sauces, it just doesn't incorporate in very well. So this can be a great little hack just to end up with a nice smooth sauce. And Dijon straight back in. At this point, we're gonna start adding our gorgonzola cheese. And even if you don't like blue cheese, I recommend you give gorgonzola a try because it's not quite as intense. Blue cheese is like the guy at the party doing a keg stand just going crazy, right? He's aggressive, he's in your face, he's nuts. Gorgonzola's like his friend who's holding his feet. He's still like kind of crazy, but he's just more in the background, a little bit less intense. That's my stuff. And in we go with the cheese. And I'm gonna do just a little bit at a time just so I don't upset the temperatures too much. And I'm just gonna work it in with a spatula here. I want my sauce to be a little bit chunky. By all means, if you want it smooth, you could blend this, but not really my style for this one. And once that cheese melts in a little bit, we can add some more. And just repeat until it's all incorporated. Once all that gorgonzola's worked in, I'm gonna start working in a little bits of Parmesan cheese. That's gonna add a lot of the salt we want to this sauce. Same deal as with the gorgonzola, just add it little by little until it's all worked in. And now that all our ingredients are in, this is the point we wanna taste it for salt. Mm, damn. For me, that's actually perfectly seasoned from the Dijon, the Parmesan, and the gorgonzola. I wouldn't put any more salt. There is one thing I will put, though. I'm putting a little bit of white pepper. Just cause it's a white sauce, of course you can do black pepper. I think white pepper is underrated. And that's it, my friends, your gorgonzola sauce is done. Here is the thickness I have it at right now. You can see it perfectly on this black plate. Personally, I don't like sauces super thick and heavy, but if you want it thicker, you can add less cream or simply just cook this down for a few minutes and it will thicken up for you. I'm starting with two big, thick tenderloin steaks, which a lot of people say is an overrated cut. I wouldn't say it's overrated. I would say it's properly rated. It is very expensive, but it's also very tender. And when you're purchasing these, try to look for two things. One, that there's quite a bit of fat marbled into that meat. And two, if you can, try to choose a thicker filet mignon. Because it's such a delicate cut, if you go for some of those thin pieces, they're just too easy to overcook, in my experience. I've always just had better results using something that's two inches or a little thicker. First of all, I pulled these steaks out of the fridge about 30 minutes before cooking, just so they're not super cold. It will help them cook a little bit more evenly. Next, the seasoning, and I'm doing a little bit of my homemade rosemary salt. If you know, you know. And if you don't know, it's super simple to make. You just start by putting some salt into a food processor. Then just add in stripped rosemary, sage leaves, peeled garlic, and a little bit of lemon zest. Blend it all up for one minute, and boom, you have rosemary salt, one of the best holiday seasonings of all time. Put it in a Tupperware container, and keep it in your fridge. It will last for a month, but I try to use it up within a few weeks for optimal flavor. Next, a little Sergeant Gilbert reporting for duty, which is just black pepper. And I tend to go finely ground on steaks. I don't want huge chunks of pepper on there, because I've found that it can actually lift the steak off the pan, and you lose your contact, which means you lose your sear. You lose your sear, that's your flavor gone. So I'll take the time to really season these up nicely. And then I'll just dip up these edges here, and the seasoning that's around. And boom, there's our two fillets ready to go. Another thing you can do if you feel like your fillet isn't quite holding together nicely, is take a little bit of butcher's twine, and just tie it around the steak to hold it together. That is gonna make it stand a little taller, and you can get a more even cook using that method. Although because these look pretty good, I'm fine with not doing it. It really is up to you. Now before we cook that steak, let me introduce you to the sponsor of today's video, who is the maker of the pan I'll be cooking the steak in, Maiden Cookware. And as many of you know, I've been using their pots and pans for years now, and they have become truly essential tools to use in my kitchen. And thanks to Maiden's outstanding quality and performance, they are used in over 2,000 top restaurants and hotel chains in America. And I love that Maiden partners with multi-generational factories and artisans to bring you a product that is an absolute pleasure to use in the kitchen. And today for the absolute best sear on our filet mignon, and that's where all the flavor comes from, we are gonna be using Maiden's carbon steel cookware. These award-winning frying pans are made in Sweden in a family-owned factory that's been producing carbon steel since the late 1800s. And carbon steel is loved by chefs all around the world because it has the best qualities of cast iron and stainless steel all in one pan. It's got the durability and heat retention of a cast iron while retaining that light maneuverability of stainless steel. The carbon steel products can seamlessly transition from stovetop to oven and even over an open fire up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Check out the carbon steel collection as well as Maiden's other cookware by clicking the link down in the description to save on your order. Thank you, Maiden, for sponsoring this video. Now let's go cook that filet. I'm gonna start by preheating my Maiden carbon steel pan, and I'll leave that on high heat for three or four minutes to really get that heat in the pan really resonating. Once it's nice and hot, I'm gonna add a little bit of neutral oil. That's just avocado. Could use another one. And let the oil heat for about 10, 15 seconds. And then we're gonna carefully place in our steaks. I'll keep the heat just a touch under high, but it really depends how powerful your burner is. And I'll just let these cook. And you might have noticed this, but whenever you're cooking a steak or really any kind of protein in a pan and you're trying to move it too soon, you'll notice that all the seasoning that was on that steak will now be stuck to the pan. You really need to give it the time to let the seasoning sear onto the meat before you turn it over. On another note, something important for you to know is that all meat has sweet spots. And by sweet spots, I mean at the doneness when it's most tender. And for most steaks, that's gonna be medium rare, but when it comes to something like lamb, medium, even medium well is its sweet spot. And for tenderloin, I would say the sweet spot is actually between rare and medium rare. I feel like we need between temperatures. Just because of how delicate this meat is, I just try to pull it back a little bit under medium rare. It can be a little bit hard to do, but the worst thing you could do is overcook this. Even at medium, I'd say it's no good anymore, really. It's not as good. And after about three minutes, I'm gonna go ahead and give these a flip. Got a really beautiful sear on that side. Really happy with how they look. Let the other side sear on high heat for another minute, at which point I'm gonna add in some shallots. Let those sear in the hot oil for a minute here. Then some garlic going in next. And at this point, I'm gonna turn the heat all the way down to low because we're gonna add in the butter and begin our basting process. And when you put that butter in, you can always be smart just to tilt the pan because you don't want the butter to burn, but you also don't wanna start basting when the butter's not quite foamy and melted. Otherwise, we're just gonna be putting wet cream over our steaks and that will sort of wash away the sear. And once the butter's foaming like you see here, it looks really, really foamy, now we're gonna start basting. After about two minutes of basting, I'm gonna add in some thyme and give them one final 30-second baste. And that's it, 30 seconds for the thyme, and they're out to rest. Now, you may notice that today, I did not use a thermometer. Instead, I opted for using the force. It's like the original Star Wars where Luke is flying down the trenches of the Death Star to deliver that final killing blow. In that moment, he drops all technology and basically uses the force, and that's what we do with the steaks. I've found, and especially when basting, if I use that thermometer too much, I always end up overcooking them. I'm really just going by feel, by poking at them, because with the basting, they're gonna carry overcook way more. But if you do do some aggressive basting, I would say you should pull these at like 105 degrees. Pull them off, let them sit for three or four minutes, then take the temperature on them. Then, if you need to put a little more heat back into them, do that. But if you take them too far, you're screwed. Just out of curiosity, haven't done it yet, they're raw, they're raw inside, no. Perfect medium rare, it's like 131 right now, which is just under medium rare, which is exactly what I wanted. Force works. I'll prove it, I'll prove it in a minute, you'll see it. All right, Marquis, here we go, dude. This looks good. I'd be happy if I got served that anywhere. Ah, I'm up here. You're down here. Why don't you get in the elevator? Come up here with me. Here we are. Oh, I'm so happy. That's actually really nice. And like I said, between rare and medium rare, I'm telling you, that is the sweet spot for filet mignon. Okay, here we go. Haven't had filet in a while. Oh my God, it's butter. I gotta try something now. I almost put some Worcestershire sauce in the sauce. I didn't wanna lose its white color, but I'm thinking with a little Worcestershire on top. In terms of cream sauce, this is one of my favorite we've had on steak. Look, I don't make bold claims unless I mean it 100% with all my little boy heart. This is the most tender steak we've had on the channel since I've worked here. And I mean that with certainty. That's what happens when you trust the universe and use the force. Dude, if you're a dude or you're a chick and you're a chick and you make that for a dude or you're a dude and you make that for a chick, you got a spouse for life, guaranteed, or your money back and everything was free. So you're not getting anything back because there was no exchange. I will say though, I did have a plan to make a red wine pan sauce to pair with this a little bit. And you don't have to do that, but I think the extra acidity from some red wine and some really good beef stock, a little butter, a little pepper, thyme, would be, that would take it to the next level. Thanks for watching today, my friend. And if you are a fan of written recipes, definitely check out my Master in the Making ebook, linked in the description. You are the master in the making. And if you want to keep learning today, you may need a turkey recipe for Christmas dinner or a rib roast recipe. It's definitely going to be one of the two in most cases. Until next time, you know I love you and I love you.