Mastering Beef Wellington: A Step‑by‑Step Guide from The Connaught’s Executive Chef

Name: Il filetto alla Wellington in un 3 stelle Michelin inglese con Marco Zampese - Connaught***
Uploaded: 2026-02-14T18:08:25.507068+00:00
Channel: Italia Squisita
Description: Summary and key takeaways on Mastering Beef Wellington: A Step‑by‑Step Guide from The Connaught’s Executive Chef, covering Introduction Marco Zampese

Italia Squisita

Feb 14, 2026

•

3 min read

YouTube video ID: qX7DVp_3uv4

Source: YouTube video by Italia Squisita — Watch original video

PDF

Introduction

Marco Zampese, executive chef at Hélène Darroze – The Connaught (London), shares the complete process behind their award‑winning Beef Wellington, a dish that blends classic French technique with British tradition.

Historical Background

The name is linked to the Duke of Wellington and the victory at Waterloo, though the recipe likely originates from the French filet de bœuf en croûte.
Over time it has become a celebratory centerpiece for families and friends.

Core Ingredients

Beef: Hereford fillet from Cumbria, aged 35 days for deeper flavor (any high‑quality centre‑cut fillet works).
Mushroom duxelle: Chopped mushrooms (preferably wild, but champignon or chestnut are fine), shallots, butter, parsley, salt & pepper.
Dry‑cured ham: Noire de Bigorre, sliced thinly.
Crepe: Acts as a moisture barrier; made from eggs, milk, flour, oil, salt, and parsley.
Puff pastry: About 3 mm thick, rectangular, kept cold.
Condiments: Dijon mustard, sea salt, pepper, egg yolk wash, thyme, Fleur de sel.
Sauce: Madeira‑infused beef jus (brown fond, white fond, reduction).

Preparation Steps

Fillet trimming & seasoning
Remove external fat and connective tissue, keep only the central portion for uniform thickness.
Season with salt & pepper, wrap tightly in cling film and chill 2 h (or up to 24 h) to set shape and absorb seasoning.
Searing
Pat dry, sear quickly in hot olive oil to develop Maillard crust, then cool.
Brush with Dijon mustard and chill again.
Mushroom duxelle
Sauté shallots, then add finely chopped mushrooms; season and cook until moisture evaporates.
Finish with chopped parsley and let cool.
Crepe batter
Whisk eggs, milk, sifted flour, oil, salt, and parsley until smooth.
Cook a single thin crepe in a non‑stick pan; set aside.
Ham preparation
Slice Noire de Bigorre ham thinly with a slicer; arrange overlapping rectangles.
Assembly
On cling film, lay ham, spread duxelle (≈½ cm thick), place the mustard‑coated fillet, and roll tightly.
Chill 10‑20 min, then wrap the crepe around the roll and chill again.
Dust the roll with flour, place on cold marble (or chilled surface), and wrap with puff pastry, sealing edges and removing air pockets.
Brush with egg yolk, rest 20‑30 min, brush a second time, and add decorative pastry leaves, thyme, pepper, and Fleur de Sel.
Baking
Pre‑heat oven to 190 °C (ventilated), then lower to 180 °C.
Bake on a metal tray for 25‑30 min, depending on thickness; avoid opening the oven.
Internal temperature: 52 °C for rare, 57‑60 °C for medium‑well.
Rest 10 min before slicing.
Sauce & plating
Serve with Madeira‑reduced beef jus (no thickener, natural collagen).
Traditional accompaniment is cranberry jam, but the chef prefers the pure beef jus.

Variations

Pigeon Wellington: Pigeon breasts, foie gras core, same duxelle, crepe, and pastry; served with honey‑glazed white beets and smoked‑whiskey jus.
Vegetarian Wellington: Leek stuffed with arugula pesto, surrounded by duxelle, crepe, and pastry; accompanied by leek purée and smoked‑hay sour‑cream sauce.

Tips for Home Cooks

Use a high‑quality centre‑cut fillet; ask the butcher for the “center” portion.
Keep all components (especially pastry) cold to prevent butter melt‑through.
Ensure no air is trapped inside the roll to avoid puffing of the pastry.
A kitchen thermometer guarantees the desired doneness.

Final Thoughts

The dish showcases how classic French techniques, British heritage, and modern sustainability (UK‑sourced produce) can coexist in a single plate. Whether prepared in a Michelin‑starred kitchen or at home, the Beef Wellington remains a spectacular centerpiece for any celebration.

Beef Wellington, when built with precise technique and quality ingredients, transforms a simple beef fillet into a show‑stopping, elegant dish that honors both French culinary tradition and British history.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Italia Squisita on YouTube?

Italia Squisita is a YouTube channel that publishes videos on a range of topics. Browse more summaries from this channel below.

Does this page include the full transcript of the video?

Yes, the full transcript for this video is available on this page. Click 'Show transcript' in the sidebar to read it.

Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.

Beef Wellington Recipe Book Recommended

Provides detailed step‑by‑step instructions and professional tips, helping home cooks replicate a Michelin‑star quality Wellington now

Amazon →

Puff Pastry Sheets Frozen

Ready‑to‑use pastry ensures the correct buttery layers and thickness, essential for a perfect golden crust today

Amazon →

Chef's Knife 8 Inch Japanese Steel

A sharp, balanced knife makes precise trimming of the fillet and slicing of ham, improving safety and results in modern kitchens

Amazon →

Sous Vide Precision Cooker

Allows precise temperature control for the beef fillet before searing, guaranteeing perfect doneness every time

Amazon →

Berkel Meat Slicer

Produces uniformly thin ham slices, preventing excess salt release and ensuring even layering in the Wellington

Amazon →

Links may be affiliate links. We only include resources that are genuinely relevant to the topic.

Summarize another video

Full Transcript YouTube

Good morning everyone, I'm Marco Zampese
executive chef of the restaurant Hélène
Darroze at The Connaught in London,
awarded with
three Michelin stars in the 2021 guide.
Our restaurant is located inside the
Connaught hotel, which is an historical hotel
of the English capital and
it is located in the Mayfair area.
Our cuisine is classic French based,
but at the same
time it is also contemporary.
Hélène Darroze is the chef patron of
our restaurant and she comes
from the French Basque Country, meaning the
Biarritz area, the south west of France.
Our cuisine is based on ingredients
that come from this land. There's
a bit of Spanish influence, but we have
an Italian influence as well, as Hélène is
a lover of Italian cuisine.
Obviously, nowadays we also
have a responsibility towards
sustainability, so we strive to
use as much as possible products that
come from the UK to also help the
local producers and so on, at the same
time we try to use new
techniques to achieve a modernization
of this classic French cuisine. Today, together with
ItaliaSquisita we decided to
present you one of the iconic dishes of
the English cuisine that became famous
mostly thanks to the web. This dish is
the Beef Wellington.
Some historians say that the name of
this dish, Wellington indeed, derives
from Arthur Weasley, first Duke of
Wellington, where the dish is said to
have been created to celebrate the
victory after the Waterloo battle
that the Englishmen won against the French.
This dish is very similar to
the French recipe of
filet de boeuf en croute,
meaning beef fillet in
crust, and so it is said that the Englishmen
changed its name after the battle
of Waterloo, exactly because they won it
into Beef Wellington.
So we can say that the origin of
this recipe is still not certain,
but one thing is certain: it is an ideal dish
to celebrate something important with
friends or family.
To prepare this dish,
I involved five members of my
brigade. We have sous chef
Andrea Granzarolo,
sous chef Timothée Martin, Andrea Nani
junior sous chef, Pietro Massano senior chef
de partie and William Stoyle, commis.
We'll obviously start with the
preparation of beef fillet.
We're using a Hereford beef fillet,
which is a beef that comes from Cumbria,
meaning we're in the North of England
as our supplier ages it
for about 35 days, so it has a slightly
more intense flavor. Obviously at home
you can use any beef fillet that your
trusted butcher suggests. We're now watching
Timothée as he starts cleaning
our fillet, removing the fat on
the surface. He's removing the side part
then we'll remove
the connective tissue skin, white
yellowish colored,
and in the end when we obtain
our clean fillet, we're
using the central part only
as it is the best part in my opinion, and
also for two other reasons: the first is
the visual aspect. When we create
our Wellington fillet, it will have an
homogeneous shape.
The other reason is that by keeping the same
thickness, the cooking will also be
homogeneous in the end. We won't throw away
the head and tail of the fillet, but these
parts can be used to
prepare a simple beef tartare
or any other preparation.
Obviously, if you're going to your butcher
you can directly ask for the
central part of the fillet.
Now, with our cleaned fillet, we're
seasoning it with salt and pepper.
We're rolling it up with
film very tightly and ideally
we would rest it in the fridge
for about 24 hours, then obviously at home
if you don't have enough time, a couple
hours will be enough. This resting time
is very important to allow
the meat to obviously absorb the flavor
of salt and pepper and also to
solidify the shape of the fillet.
After this resting time, we can
remove the film. We're lightly drying
the fillet with a piece of
paper towel. We're going to
quickly roast it in a
pan with olive oil.
This process must be very quick
because we obviously don't want
to damage the cooking of the meat and
it's important as we're creating
the Maillard reaction, which is the
caramelization of sugars.
We're indeed roasting it on every side
very quickly and we're cooling it down
quickly in a blast chiller
if we're in a restaurant. At
home, you can let it cool down in a
fresh place for 10-15 minutes.
We're now watching Timothée as he takes
the cooled fillet and he's brushing it
with some Dijon mustard.
We're then allowing it to rest
in the fridge again, so in the meantime
we're preparing all of the other
ingredients that we'll need for
making our Beef Wellington.
We'll need Andrea's help to
prepare our brown fond,
our beef jus. We're using beef
scraps. We're going to roast them very
slowly in a pot with olive oil
without moving them too much, otherwise
the meat will release liquids and
those will transfer to the sauces. So, we're
roasting it very slowly.
We're going to add vegetables, in
this case we have shallot,
garlic and some aromatic herbs.
We're adding butter
and roasting everything well
obviously without burning the meat,
nor the vegetables.
We're straining them by using a
tray with holes or a strainer,
removing the excess fat,
then we're placing the meat and
the vegetables inside the same pan.
We're deglazing everything with some
Madeira, allowing the alcohol to evaporate and
we're covering our meat and
vegetables with white fond,
some chicken stock.
We're simmering everything
for about two hours,
adding white fond if necessary.
We're filtering everything and we're
reducing until we reach
the adequate consistency.
At The Connaught, in our kitchen, we don't
use any thickener for
sauces, so everything comes from the
natural collagen given by the white fond.
Eventually we're adding
a reduction to our sauce, made with
Madeira, shallot, pepper in grains
to give a slightly spiced touch and
also this slightly sweet flavor
given by Madeira.
At this point, we'll need Pietro
to make a mushroom duxelle
especially with chopped mushrooms, cooked and
finished with herbs, such as parsley.
Obviously, if the season is right, the best
thing is to use wild mushrooms
such as porcini or
chanterelles. In our case, we'll use
classic champignon or chestnut mushrooms.
If you have big quantities, you can
obviously use a blender maybe,
but my advice is to
cut them with a knife so obviously
we're not damaging the product.
Meanwhile, in a pot we're going to
heat up oil and butter.
We're adding chopped shallot and
let it lightly fry slowly.
We're adding our chopped mushrooms.
During the cooking, we're seasoning
salt and pepper. When all of the cooking
water evaporates, we're adding
some chopped parsley.
We're letting it rest on one side
until everything cools down.
Some chefs just use the
filet, obviously a beef one, this mix
of cooked mushrooms and then dry cured ham
and then puff pastry. Other chefs
don't use dry cured ham, instead
they use a crepe and then puff
pastry. For our Beef Wellington,
I decided to use both
since dry cured ham in my opinion
adds a good taste to our
final result, to our final wellington,
and I added the crepe since
it has a waterproofing function. The crepe
allows all of the moisture to stay inside
our filet, in this way
we won't damage the puff pastry.
During the cooking
Andrea will follow
a very classic procedure to make
crepes. He's going to whip some eggs
with a whisk, then we'll add some milk
and we'll be slowly incorporating
all of the remaining milk, some
sieved flour, a drizzle of oil,
salt and eventually, when we'll obtain a
smooth and homogeneous mixture, we'll
add some chopped parsley in here, as well.
Let's take a hot nonstick pan,
better if the diameter is equal to
the length of the filet, so as
we're rolling our Wellington, we're using
one crepe only. Let's pour some oil
or butter is great as well.
Then we're going to pour the actual
mixture for the crepe, just enough
to cover the surface of the pan.
It'll cook for a couple of minutes each side.
We're putting it on one side and
we're using it later,
as we're assembling our filet.
William is now going to slice the
dry cured ham using our Berkel machine.
We're using a ham called
Noire de Bigorre. It's a ham
that is produced in the Pyrenees, very sweet.
It's very important to use a slicer
to cut the ham with the same
thickness, obviously thin slices because
if they're bigger, they're going to release
a quantity of salt, of sapidity
that is too high for our final filet.
William is going to create a rectangle
using ham slices
lightly overlapping one onto the other.
At this point, we're ready to
assembly, but one key thing
is missing: the puff
pastry. At the Connaught, we are obviously
making puff pastry everyday
for different preparations, including
our wellington beef. In this
case, we indeed made it in advance
since it's a preparation that requires
a long time. We should dedicate a whole
tutorial in order to explain you how
to make it properly. The good news is
that you can find puff pastry in
any good supermarket or in any bakery.
What is important is for it to be rectangular
in shape, with a thickness of about 3
mm, better if the dimension is always
slightly bigger than our filet,
so then we'll have scraps
and imperfections we can remove.
We have our filet ready,
we have our mushrooms duxelle,
we have crepes, dry cured ham and
obviously puff pastry. Let's move on to
the assembly of our Beef Wellington.
We're placing on top of a film sheet
our dry cured ham in a rectangular
shape, of course. We're spreading
this mushroom mixture on top.
We're trying to create a thickness of about
half a centimeter, helping ourselves with a
spatula, then we're placing in the
center our beef filet with the
mustard and we're rolling everything up
very tightly by wrapping the film.
Ideally, we would rest this
roll for about 10-20 minutes, then
we're repeating the same passage
using the crepe.
All of these passages seem very
banal, but it's fundamental for our
roll to be very tight, without
air inside, and in order to obtain this
we're using the elasticity of the cling film
by always keeping it very taut.
We're now at the final passage of our
Beef Wellington: we're sprinkling some
flour, so that the puff pastry
doesn't stick.
We'll need a cold marble counter
if possible, or a
cold place, otherwise our puff pastry
since it is high in fat content,
is going to break. We're
brushing with egg yolk.
We're placing our roll on top,
previously made with beef.
We're rolling everything quite tightly
but not excessively, otherwise
we'd break the puff pastry.
We're lightly pressing using our hands so
all of the air can come out.
It's very important that there's no
air inside, otherwise
during the cooking our filet
is going to puff up. We're now brushing the
outer part of our Wellington
with egg yolk and a drop of water.
And we're closing the sides with a fork.
In my opinion, we would ideally
brush our Wellington two
times so as to obtain an optimal
color at the end of our cooking.
So, we're brushing it the first time,
allowing it to rest for 20 minutes,
half hour so that the first layer
of egg yolk dries.
We're then brushing it a second time,
always spreading thinly with
our brush, and we're adding some decoration.
In our case, we're placing some
braids, some small leaves made of puff
pastry, at random. You can obviously
let loose with any other shape,
then we're adding some thyme
leaves, some pepper and Fleur de sel.
For the cooking, we'll need a
good oven. We would ideally use
a metal tray inside the oven.
Let's pre-heat the oven to 190°C on
ventilated mode. Once the oven
reaches the adequate temperature,
we're placing our Wellington
filet directly on the metal tray.
We're lowering the oven to 180°C
and we're baking our
Wellington for about 25-30 minutes,
obviously depending on the thickness. It's
important not to open the oven,
otherwise we would damage the
growth of our puff pastry. After
these 25-30 minutes,
we're taking the filet out
of the oven. As you can see,
it is nice and golden brown.
For a rare cooking, just as I like it,
I'm suggesting to reach a
temperature of about 52°C if you have
a thermometer for temperature,
otherwise if you prefer it well
done let's say, I'd reach 57-60°C.
We're resting it for about 10 minutes.
This resting time is very
important, because it makes it so that all
of the meat juices stay
indeed inside the meat. Now all
that is left is to cut our Wellington.
We can see the cooking is rare.
Here in England the classic Wellington Beef
is served with a sauce
with cranberry jam.
We're finishing ours simply with
a Madeira beef jus, as the quality of the
beef is indeed very important to me
and I don't want to cover it with the
sweetness of cranberries.
Nowadays there's many variants
of Wellington Beef and of course
chefs all around the world
let their imagination loose
by using different proteins
such as fish, or maybe
venison, wild duck, in our
restaurant we often serve
Wellington pigeon.
It's basically the two breasts of
pigeon where we're placing a piece
of foie gras inside and for the outside
we're proceeding as in the classic
Beef Wellington, but we're not adding ham
so, again, we have 2 pigeon breasts,
foie gras in the center and on the outside
part we're still adding
a mushroom duxelle, a crepe and puff
pastry, and we're serving it
on the plate with
some white beets glazed with
honey and a pigeon jus finished
with smoked whiskey.
We also made a very simple vegetarian
version, that is still very
very tasty using leek. Leek
is cooked in vegetable broth,
then it is emptied and stuffed
on the inside with an arugula pesto.
On the outer part we're still
using our mushroom duxelle,
crepe, puff pastry and on the side
we have leek puree with
thin raw champignon shavings.
It is eventually served with a sauce
made with a base of sour cream smoked with
hay and leek oil.
OK, I hope you liked our recipe for
Beef Wellington, I hope you
will try it at home or in a restaurant. At
this point I can just say
thank you to ItaliaSquisita and Berkel
Italia for giving us this
opportunity. Obviously thanks to Hélène
that is always by our side.
Thanks to Connaught hotel, that
allows us to work in this amazing place.
And I can't forget
obviously about our team members, who
help me every day and are incredible chefs.
Thanks, everyone, hugs and
I'm waiting for you in London!

Help & FAQ

Be Smart

Tim Ferriss

Apr 04, 2026

Watch Read Summary

PDF

Introduction

Historical Background

Core Ingredients

Preparation Steps

Variations

Tips for Home Cooks

Final Thoughts

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Italia Squisita on YouTube?

Does this page include the full transcript of the video?

Helpful resources related to this video

Share This Summary

Embed This Summary