I was recently struck with a half-baked idea to make a corned beef Wellington.
The inspiration is basically that I have a beef tenderloin sitting in my freezer that I was planning to make a beef Wellington with soon
And St Paddy's Day is coming up, and I was also debating on doing a corned beef.
I have some experience curing meat, I've made my own bacon and corned beef from scratch in the past, so this isn't totally out of my wheelhouse.
But I've never attempted to corn a beef tenderloin (and from my limited googling, I'm not sure that anyone else has ever been crazy enough to try it either) so I'm not too sure what that process will do to a tender cut like this.
I'm also looking for some inspiration on how to sort of "Irish" it up a bit (yes, I'm aware that corned beef isn't particularly Irish, it's still made its way into the Irish American diet as a St Paddy's thing)
Normally I flambe the duxelles with some cognac, so I'm figuring I'll swap that for some Irish whiskey
I also normally wrap some prosciutto between the pastry and duxelles as a bit of a moisture barrier, I feel like maybe there's an argument for using some thin-sliced bacon for that instead (probably back bacon if I can get my hands on it, but that's not easy in the US) and maybe wrap some cabbage into it as well
I normally serve it with a green peppercorn sauce, so I figure I'll work some Guinness into that.
Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this. Anything else you would or wouldn't do with this idea? Has anyone ever been struck by madness before and attempted to corn a tenderloin?
Edit: still brainstorming, maybe some sausage or black pudding (also a tough thing to find around me) mixed into the duxelles?
The flavor is of course going to change dramatically by corning it, lots of salt and spices and such involved there, but I'm not terribly concerned about that, it isn't really the most flavorful cut to begin with, not a lot of fat and connective tissue to give it flavor, which is also why it's so tender which is the real draw
In general my plan is to cure it, but otherwise treat it like I would a normal wellington, so overcooking hopefully shouldn't be a problem- quick sear, wrap it up then cook to probably medium-ish (normally aim more rare/medium-rare for Wellington, but rare corned beef just kind of doesn't sound great to me)
And yeah I think the pudding instead of or mixed into the duxelles is a good move, not easy to find around me but I'll be looking around for it and I have almost 2 weeks to track it down