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?
