As a keen home cook, being invited to an exclusive masterclass on how Tesco has created the most luxurious dish in its Chef’s Collection was too good an opportunity to pass on. The Tesco Finest Beef Wellington was developed by its executive chef Jamie Robinson and Russ Sanders, innovation chef for the Hilton Food Group.
They welcomed me into their R&D hub at the supermarket giant’s head office in Welwyn Garden City last week, which resembles the top restaurant kitchens seen in TV shows like MasterChef – a sea of gleaming silver gadgets, wooden chopping boards and ovens, just without the shouting.
Jamie and Russ, who both started their culinary careers in top restaurant kitchens, have spent 18 months perfecting the processes to make a restaurant-quality Wellington for customers to cook at home.
As the beef fillet cannot be seared to seal in its juices and give caramelisation of the meat, the duo have created a powder giving the same umami flavour.
With Russ giving me a guiding hand where needed, I copied Jamie by liberally spreading the duxelles – finely chopped mushrooms and shallots infused with Madeira wine, port and brandy to give it a decadent sweetness – across a parsley infused crepe.
We then rolled a fillet of matured beef in their special umami mix before painting it with English mustard and laying it on the crepe and rolling it to seal in all the flavours.
After wetting the top edge of a layer of puff pastry the crepe covered fillet is rolled in this, before a final pastry lattice is wrapped around it to add to its aesthetic appeal.
With each step laid out and explained it was surprisingly easy to make and looked stunning.
As it comes in baking paper all customers will have to do at home is brush it with egg and put it in the oven.
And the final result after cooking was even better, it looked and smelled so enticing that I couldn’t wait to tuck in, with the medium rare fillet melting in the mouth, the herby crepe and duxelles moreish and the buttery pastry finishing it off perfectly.
This truly is a supermarket product that is as good as any Wellington I’ve eaten in restaurants, so is worth the cost, which isn’t cheap at between £64.90 and £77.33, although it serves four people.
And it’s so much easier than spending hours at home trying to perfect the duxelles and the pastry to cook it from scratch.