Mini Beef Wellington Bites

Two months ago already, my book club met to discuss the murder mystery novel, The Trespasser by Tana French. The story centers around the young and beautiful Aislinn who was murdered while preparing a romantic dinner for her new beau. That dinner left in the oven and later discovered by the Murder Squad Detectives was a Beef Wellington.

If you have read many of my book reviews, you know that I love to pair food with our chosen novels when I head out to my book club meetings. Unfortunately, I had planned on making these Mini Beef Wellington Bites for that meeting last November, but a mix up on my calendar prevented me from making them. Since I had already told my book club that I would be bringing them, they were a bit disappointed. So much so, a friend and fellow book club member decided to make some for our December meeting to discuss the novel,  Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple.

The Mini Beef Wellington Bites were delicious! Much better than the novel we discussed that December night. I finally got around to making them and they are absolutely wonderful! I will be adding them to this weekend’s New Year’s Eve gathering. They take a bit of time to put together because of the multiple steps, but the recipe itself is an easy one.

Since I belong to two book clubs – yes, I love to read. I will be bringing these Mini Beef Wellington Bites to a January meeting where my other book club will be discussing The Trespasser. Yep, both book clubs chose the same novel to read – so I am still able to pair these tasty Mini Beef Wellington Bites with a book club discussion of The Trespasser.

Mini Beef Wellington Bites

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 beef loin tri tip steaks cut into 24 (1-inch) cubes
• salt and pepper
• 10 ounces white mushrooms, stemmed and finely chopped
• 1 large shallot, finely chopped
• 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 1 egg, beaten

Directions

1. Preheat to the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
3. Pat the beef dry with a paper towel and season all sides with salt and pepper.
4. In batches, quickly sear the cubed beef on 2 sides until browned, 2 minutes on each side. Transfer to a plate to cool. 
5. Using a food processor finely chop mushrooms and shallot separately.  
6. Add the mushrooms to the hot skillet and cook until beginning to brown and release liquid, about 5 minutes. 
7. Add the shallots and continue cooking until mushroom mixture is dry and shallots are soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. 
8. Roll 1 sheet of puff pastry to a 10 by 14-inch rectangle. Equally spacing mounds out, spoon 12 mounds of mushroom and shallot mixture on the pastry. Top each mushroom mound with a piece of beef.
9. With a sharp knife, cut the pastry into even squares around the meat and mushrooms. 
10. Taking up opposite corners of dough wrap up beef meeting in the middle, take two more opposite corners wrap up and meet in the middle. Pinching dough to close. 
11. Turn dough covered beef upside down and set onto parchment paper. Press down to seal dough.
12. Using pastry brush, lightly brush each wrapped dough with beaten egg.
13. Bake the Mini Beef Wellingtons about 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown. Turning cookie sheet half way throughly baking time to assure even cooking. 
14. Remove from the oven to a serving platter and let cool at least 10 minutes before serving. 
15. Enjoy!

This is a beautiful appetizer worthy of any party! We enjoyed them warm and at room temperature. I imagine that if you wanted to reheat them in the oven you can, but I would be extra careful not to over over cook the meat. The key is to have tender meat so that you can easily bite into the bites. They are too big to be a one bite appetizer.

This recipe was slightly adapted from Claire Robinson’s recipe on the Food Network.