Turn Pigs In A Blanket Into Mini Beef Wellingtons With One Luxurious Swap

Beef Wellington is an impressive, labor-intensive centerpiece that's notoriously hard to master, landing it in the special occasion category. But you can make special occasion appetizers with mini beef Wellingtons with much more ease. And to do so means taking a page from the more pedestrian pigs in a blanket.

You'll essentially replace sausages with a sumptuous beef Wellington filling. The filling itself entails more effort than wrapping a sausage in pastry dough, but it's much more manageable to form than the main dish counterpart because you're cutting the beef into small chunks. Furthermore, whereas a classic beef Wellington requires a large cut of steak like a tenderloin, we use filet mignon in our recipe for mini beef Wellingtons because they're smaller and easier to cut. Filet mignon is one of the best cuts of steak, making mini beef Wellington bites even more decadent than their main dish counterpart.

You'll start by searing bite-sized chunks of filet mignon to get a crust, leaving the interior raw. After removing the beef, use the same pan to fry onions before adding finely diced mushrooms, blending the mixture with a dollop of Dijon. Then, you'll layer a few teaspoons of the mushroom mixture over a 5 x 3-inch rectangle of puff pastry, top it with a chunk of beef, and fold the puff pastry around the filling using egg white to adhere the pastry dough. Brush each puff pastry bite with egg wash and bake for 18 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wrapping the filling completely in the puff pastry turns them into mini beef Wellingtons, but you can also make the process even easier with a more open-faced approach. And the presentation might be even more appealing. Instead of cutting puff pastry into squares or rectangles, you'll use a cookie cutter to make rounds, pressing them into individual muffin tins, brushing them with a bit of mustard, and layering first chunks of raw beef tenderloin or filet mignon followed by the mushroom mixture. These will require a hotter temperature to cook the exposed meat, but will take less time to bake. They'll transform into beautiful beef Wellington cups that are also easier to eat without making a mess.

If you're a meat lover, you can bring even more protein to the mix by stirring slices of prosciutto into the mushroom mixture. At the other end of the spectrum, you can leave out the meat altogether and make vegetarian mushroom Wellington bites for a plant-based appetizer. You'll still get the same umami-richness from the mushrooms, replacing diced buttons or creminis with ultra meaty chunks of portobello or porcinis as we use in our vegetarian mushroom Wellington. You can add a thin slice of provolone or brie to the mix for gooey decadence. Of course, no mini beef Wellington bite is complete without a dipping sauce, and a creamy horseradish sauce is the ideal spicy and zippy complement to umami-rich beef and mushrooms.