Turkey Wellington Sous Vide

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Recipe for turkey wellington sous vide

You might be familiar with the ultra-classic Beef Wellington, or Bøf Wellington, if you will – the quintessential New Year’s Eve main course and, incidentally, Gordon Ramsay’s signature dish.

Beef Wellington is quintessentially traditional English food, through and through! And let’s agree that serving it nowadays is a bit kitschy (in the best possible way).

What is Beef Wellington?

A traditional Beef Wellington is made with a beef tenderloin, which is first seared, brushed with mustard, rolled in a mixture of foie gras and mushrooms, then wrapped in prosciutto followed by puff pastry. Finally, it’s baked in the oven.

Beef Wellington is the perfect combination of flavors, and it’s actually a complete meal on its own. So you don’t even need to think about side dishes – a Beef Wellington has it all!

However, it’s also quite a challenge to make the dish perfectly, because you can’t control the meat’s cooking process along the way; the meat is hidden behind a wall of puff pastry.

But I have the solution.

Beef Wellington using sous vide

With the sous vide method, you are more likely to ensure that your Wellington comes out perfectly.

My husband has previously made a sous vide Beef Wellington, and it turned out absolutely fabulous.

However, let me be clear: using the sous vide method also has its challenges.

With sous vide, you also risk overcooking the meat. The reason is that the meat is already “cooked” before it goes in the oven (whereas, in a traditional Beef Wellington, the tenderloin is not fully cooked before being oven-baked).

The trick is to let the sous vide-cooked meat cool down completely before wrapping it in the other ingredients and baking it in the oven.

Turkey Wellington

Beef Wellington might not be the most weekday-friendly dish, as it does require some time and effort.

There’s almost no limit to what people put in a Wellington as a substitute for the beef tenderloin: we’ve seen everything from duck breast and chicken to beets and portobello mushrooms.

You can also make a super budget-friendly version of a Beef Wellington by using Terres Major, an overlooked and much cheaper (but really delicious!) cut of meat.

Making a Wellington with turkey is really about merging two worlds: the luxurious feast versus the sad and dry everyday meal.

Turkey breast can be a bit boring and almost shabby in taste. At the very least, it’s not the most festive or exciting.

The reason turkey breast is so difficult to handle – or at least make truly delicious – is that turkey is SO lean, and while that can have its advantages (for example, if you’re trying to watch your waistline), it also means there’s less juice and flavor. Fat adds loads of good flavor to a piece of meat.

This “Turkey Wellington” was thus my attempt to jazz up the turkey breast and create perhaps the ultimate weekday meal!

And did it work?

Yes, it tasted REALLY wonderful! The turkey was tender and juicy, but the puff pastry could have used an extra 5 minutes – it turned out a bit pale ?

And yes, it can definitely be called the ultimate weekday meal! If you simply prepare the meat in your sous vide the day before, allowing it to chill in the fridge, then a Wellington CAN easily be part of a busy weekday.

You can actually prepare most of it the day before if it fits better into your schedule. For example, you can choose to make both the meat and mushroom filling the day before, so your Wellington only needs to be assembled and baked on the day itself – OR you can even prepare both the meat and filling AND assemble your Wellington the previous day, so it just needs to be baked on the day!

Where does Beef Wellington actually get its name from?

The dish is said to have been the favorite of the first Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley. Whether this is true or not is actually unknown, and it’s also uncertain whether the dish even originates from England – or if it actually comes from France… We’ll leave that one here.

Now for the fun part!

Servings: 6 people

Turkey Wellington Sous Vide

Author: Anette Søstrøm Asmussen

Keyword: Dinner, Food For Guests, meat, New Year, Party, Poultry, Puff Pastry, Turkey, Turkey Breast

Prep Time: 4 hours hours

Cook Time: 30 minutes minutes

Metric - US Customary

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Ingredients

• 900 gram Turkey Breast
• 1 kg Mushroom or other edible mushrooms
• Puff Pastry 1 roll of 250 grams
• Parma Ham 2 x 170 grams
• Mustard for brushing the meat
• 1 Egg for brushing the puff pastry

Instructions

Turkey sous vide

• 1. Set your sous vide to 56 degrees Celsius (133 degrees Fahrenheit).
  2. Place the turkey meat in a vacuum bag.
  3. Vacuum seal the bag and put it in the water bath. Let the meat cook here for 4 hours.
  4. After 4 hours, remove the turkey from the water bath.
  5. Open the vacuum bag and take out the meat.
  6. Pat the meat dry with a clean cloth or tea towel.
  7. Heat a pan over high heat.
  8. When the pan is VERY HOT, sear the turkey. You do not need to use fat. Remember, the meat only needs a sear for flavor, so it should only have about 20 seconds on each side.
  9. Remove the seared meat from the pan.
  10. Place the meat in a bag and put it in the freezer for cooling for an hour.
  11. After an hour, take the meat out of the freezer.
  12. Now place the meat in the fridge for 2 hours. In the meantime, start preparing the filling.
•  
• 1. Rinse the mushrooms for soil residue.
  2. Put the cleaned mushrooms in your blender. You can also use an immersion blender if you have one.
  3. Blend the mushrooms finely. Champignons turn completely black when blended, so you are warned ?
  4. Heat a pan over medium heat.
  5. Put the blended mushroom mixture on the dry pan.
  6. Let it cook over medium heat for 40-60 minutes. The reason they need so long is that we want all the liquid out of them.
  7. After 40-60 minutes, the mushroom mixture has turned into a dry, "hard" mass that no longer resembles mushrooms!
•  
• 1. Take the turkey breast out of the fridge once it is completely cooled.
  2. Cut off the ends of the meat and save the ends for, for example, lunch. In a traditional Wellington, you use the cut chateaubriand (the officially best piece of the animal), which is cut from the middle of a trimmed tenderloin. Therefore, a Beef Wellington gets its very uniform "sausage shape" with flat ends. And of course, that is the appearance we are aiming for with our Turkey Wellington!
  3. Brush the meat with mustard in a thin layer.
  4. Take a piece of plastic wrap that is slightly larger than your puff pastry.
  5. Distribute the prosciutto in a thin layer on top of the plastic wrap.
  6. Then spread the mushroom mixture on top of the prosciutto.
  7. Place the turkey breast in the middle and on top of the mushroom mixture.
  8. Roll it tightly together in the plastic wrap to form a sausage.
  9. Let it stand for 15 minutes.
  10. Remove the plastic wrap from the "sausage."
  11. Place the puff pastry on the table.
  12. Lift the sausage onto the puff pastry.
  13. Roll the whole thing together.
  14. Place the package in the fridge for 2 hours.
•  
• 1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius (374 degrees Fahrenheit) with fan.
  2. Take the package out of the fridge.
  3. Score the dough and brush with egg yolk. See how in the video below.
  4. Place a piece of parchment paper on a wire rack. It is important that there is plenty of air/"ventilation" around the dough because it will produce condensation - and that will make the puff pastry soft. Therefore, it is not optimal to bake it on a regular baking sheet.
  5. Place your Turkey Wellington in the preheated oven.
  6. Let it bake for about 25-30 minutes until the puff pastry is crispy and golden.
  7. Take the finished Turkey Wellington out of the oven. Let it stand on the wire rack so the puff pastry does not get soft from condensation.
  8. Cut it into slices with a bread knife.
  9. Serve!

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