Three words: momofuku, wellington & keto

One of the first posts I made was a momofuku style Short Rib Wellington. They're an awesome way to save money while being extremely pretentious.

But that's just scratching the surface. Because while the 100 Hour Short Rib Wellington is pretty awesome, it's not keto. And if you've gotten old and fat like me, you need to start watching your carbs. A Gordon Ramsay Wellington would probably set you back north of $22 per serving; this is probably less than $6.

The biggest difference is obviously the crust; I originally used a variant of TJ's fathead dough for her keto Beef Wellington recipe which I definitely liked. However, I don't keep any THM products around, nor am I really a fan of that product line. Where I agree with TJ is that Gordon Ramsay really set the gold standard for a Beef Wellington. I now use Melissa Sevigny's Easy Keto Dough for not only this recipe, but for tons of things. It's simply delicious and Melissa is a genius.

• Meat related processes:
  • Pre-freeze seasoning & searing
  • Freezing (for food safety reasons)
  • Sous-vide process
  • Searing and resting
• Fathead dough
• Other fillings
• Assembly
• Baking
• Sauce

So, there's multiple stages of prep and cooking in this meal. Giving an accurate amount of time the whole thing takes is hard.

You can start with a good thick cut of flanken (Korean) style short ribs.

Recently, my butcher began selling the entire end-cap of the short rib, and I've fallen in love with doing it that way.

Either way, I season them with salt, pepper, and Herbs de Provence then sear them in an extremely hot (550+° F) cast iron pan with a thin layer of avocado oil. You're just trying to get a bit of the Maillard reaction, even if you're not getting a full caramelization. The important point is to leave as much of the meat behind the sear as raw as possible.

I then pack a vacuum seal bag (I use FoodSaver bags) with the short ribs, and a liberal amount of minced garlic, and throw them in the freezer.

They need to be in there for a while; think about the food safety rules for sushi-grade fish; between the freeze and the sear, we're going to kill any bacteria on the meat that may thrive and spoil our food when we put it in the sous vide for three days.

And that's the next step. We take it out of the freezer, let it thaw at room temperature, and then into the sous vide at 134° F for 72 hours, at least three days (and change) before you want to eat it.

The next stage is pretty easy. Just go on with your life for three days.

I still fill them with my onion/garlic/butter/rum paste and the duxelles both; the flambé of the spiced rum really imparts an amazing flavor.

The prosciutto is also the same as the other recipe, so no changes there, but I don't bother with the spiced duxelles - no sriracha in this recipe - and there's no crepé because, well, keto.

The big difference here is fathead dough. There's a million recipes for it, like here, here, here and here. I use some variation of them all, which I'll include below.

Without further ado, here's the ingredients and the process:

1. ~2 lbs of flanken style Short ribs (or a complete end-cap)
2. ~4+ slices of prosciutto
3. 1 medium shallot
4. 4+ tbsp minced garlic
5. 6 oz Baby Bella mushrooms
6. 4 oz heavy whipping cream
7. 2 oz Dusseldorf mustard
8. 6 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
9. 1 cube unsalted sweet cream butter
10. 1 tsp psyllium husk powder
11. 2 oz cream cheese
12. 6 oz almond flour
13. 2 eggs
14. 1.5 oz Kraken spiced rum (94 proof version)
15. Avocado oil
16. Salt
17. Pepper
18. Herbs de Provence

You'll also need some pretty standard - and a few rather obscure - cooking utensils and appliances:

• Sous vide (I drilled a hole in the lid of an Igloo stackable cooler for an Anova Precision Cooker)
• Vacuum sealer
• Two omelet pans
• Small saucepan
• Medium saucepan
• Cast iron pan
• Baking dish
• Wax paper
• Plastic wrap
• Pastry brush
• Rolling pin
• Sharp knife + cutting board

Directions

1. Season short ribs with salt, pepper and Herbs de Provence.
2. Quickly sear on 550+° F cast iron until Maillard reaction begins. Remove from heat before meat begins to cook throughout.
3. Vacuum seal ribs with approximately 2 tbsp minced garlic, freeze for at least 72 hours.
4. Remove ribs from freezer, leave in bag, let thaw at room temperature for at least 8 hours.
5. Sous vide ribs at 134° F for 72 hours.
6. Take the ribs out of the sous vide, leave them in the bag, and let them rest.
7. Finely dice baby bella mushrooms.
8. In an omelet-sized frying pan, 2-3 tbsp of butter, and in go the mushrooms on medium heat.
9. Dice shallot and throw into frying pan with 4 oz of butter on low-medium heat.
10. Add minced garlic, increase heat to medium-high.
11. When shallots begin to carmelize, then increase heat to high, add rum, light on fire, wait until it goes out, decrease heat to low. Let simmer on lowest possible setting.
12. Check the duxelles; stir on occasion until all the mushrooms appear to be dehydrated.
13. Remove steak from bags.
14. Remove onions from heat.
15. Cut off the bottom of each steak. The whole thing; fat, bone, gristle, all of it. Leave just the super tender part above. Discard remnants or, alternatively, I take the fat and bone and slow simmer for a few hours to make a fat and marrow reduction for other recipes.
16. Once duxelles are dried, remove from heat.
17. Dice the remaining steak into strips and set aside. Do not worry about it cooling too much; it's about to bake.
18. Throw mozzarella and cream cheese into microwave for approximately 90 to 120 seconds, then stir until smoothly blended.
19. Slowly add in the almond flour and psyllium husk powder, spread over the top of the cheese mixture.
20. Add one egg as well, keep stirring while mixture is still warm. Once warm to the touch, knead if necessary.
21. Lay out one sheet of wax paper, lay the dough in the middle, top with another sheet, then use rolling pin the push it out into a large thin sheet.
22. Lay out prosciutto, slightly overlapping.
23. Paint a layer of both duxelles and onion on the prosciutto.
24. Lay out the strips of short rib, stacked on top of each other, and pack them in tight, then wrap up with the prosciutto all the way around, and then with the fathead dough.
25. Trim excess fathead dough.
26. Set oven to 425° F.
27. Wrap in plastic wrap tightly, and place in fridge for 20-30 minutes.
28. Break an egg into a small dish, whisk.
29. Remove Wellington from fridge, remove from plastic wrap, place in baking dish.
30. Paint Wellington with egg wash and score top diagonally.
31. Bake until golden brown - approximately 30 minutes. With ten minutes to go, I usually sprinkle large granules of sea salt across the top.
32. While baking, combine mustard and heavy cream in small saucepan on low heat, stirring occasionally.
33. Slice, then serve with mustard sauce.

Pairs well with:

• IPAs (if you're not doing keto)
• Red wines