Swap This Old-School Classic Into Your Beef Wellington For A Cheap Alternative

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When cooking for the holidays or any special occasion, a fancy take on a classic steak is a surefire way to elevate your menu. Take for instance, beef Wellington, traditionally made by wrapping beef tenderloin in layers of cured ham or prosciutto, sauteed mushrooms, pâté, and a flaky pastry exterior. But, in this economy, it's understandable if you want the impressive finesse of the dish without the elevated price tag that comes with specialty butcher cuts like tenderloin. To find out how to make the steak dish both delicious and economical, we talked to Amanda Freitag, Food Network celebrity chef and "Chopped" judge, at the Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival presented by Baha Mar. "You could do a twist and do a Salisbury Wellington," the expert chef and cookbook author told Tasting Table, referring to an old school dish that involves ground beef formed into steak-like patties.

Though typically served with creamy mushroom sauces, gravy, or hearty sides like mashed potatoes, at first mention, Salisbury steak might sound eerily similar to a hamburger. However, the ground meat dish that proliferated around the turn of the 20th century is formed with binders and flavorful ingredients like breadcrumbs and Worcestershire sauce — much like meatballs or meatloaf. With the cost of steak these days, ground beef is a tasty and cheaper alternative to add into your beef Wellington recipe. 

To make "Salisbury Wellington," Freitag describes a process similar to making a classic beef Wellington, simply swapping the ground beef for the beef tenderloin. First, combine 80:20 ground beef with eggs, breadcrumbs, and other ingredients your classic Salisbury steak recipe calls for, then give it the Wellington treatment. "Take a meat patty, almost like a burger, sear it all around nice and rare, and then chill that," the Freitag says. Chilled meat is crucial to best flavor, even cooking, and for working with cold pastry, so don't skip this step. "Wrap that in prosciutto and mushroom, puff pastry, and you have ground beef as your center." While traditional beef Wellington can be cooked medium rare or rare, a version made with Salisbury steak needs to be cooked fully to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit since undercooked ground beef can pose food safety risks. 

Even though beef Wellington is time intensive — with sauteing the mushrooms with butter and shallots and, of course, wrapping the steak in pastry like a jelly roll — mixing up Salisbury steak doesn't add on much time, so don't sweat the cost-saving swap. Instead, Freitag recommends other ingredients that can help save time and energy when preparing the impressive dish, most notably frozen puff pastry. Though mastering beef Wellington (and cost-saving twists on the dish) can be intimidating, Freitag says "if you take just a few baby steps into it, you can do it."