**The Art of Creating a Stunning Mushroom Wellington**

So now that I've got three layers, I'm going to do one final layer of mushrooms to kind of enrobe the whole thing when you work with the mushrooms after they've cooled, they're actually slightly easier to work with too. When they're cold, because the fat congeals a little bit so they kind of you can Pat them down to adhere a little bit more easily. So you don't have to push it down too much, you're just kind of gently shaping it a little bit so that it looks even and then the mushrooms adhere just a little. So gently you can stretch the dough slightly as you work if need be. We're going to pull this over like so and then the next step is to brush this with an egg wash so that the other side will stick as I lift this, I'm just gently stretching it here we go, there we go. You can kind of maneuver it back and forth as you need when you pull that second flap over, you want to make sure that you're just pressing it just gently you don't want to smush it but you want to press enough to make sure that the two pieces of puff pastry stick together.

**Creating the Log**

Okay so now that our log has been created this way, we're going to seal it on both sides. I'm going to do a similar approach adding the egg wash just to kind of help seal and what I'm going to do here is just pinch it to seal and then I like to just keep it simple and fold it underneath. Fold this under look at that, we got a beautiful mushroom log. Now I'm going to cut my excess parchment you can just use a pairing knife for this applying pressure along the rim.

**The Fun Part - Decorating Your Puff Pastry**

Now is the fun part decorating your puff pastry. I'm going to brush it with an egg wash again, the purpose of it really is to just kind of help build Sheen and help the puff pastry develop a deeper color as it bakes. I'm going to take a sharp pairing knife and I'm going to start by drawing a thin line down the center just deep enough to score through the top layer of puff pastry. I'm going to do kind of a nice little cross-hatch pattern, but truly you can do whatever you want to your puff pastry now that I've created lines that kind of run the length of the puff pastry I've set the foundation for decorating.

**Creating a Cross-Hatch Pattern**

To create my cross-hatch pattern, I'm going to go from one line that is just left of the center, just kind of in a downward motion. This is my favorite part of building the Wellington, because as soon as I finish one strip I kind of rotate to do the opposite for the next one, that I'm actually forming a kind of diagonal zigzag pattern. Everything is fully cooled, the puff pastry is looking great.

**The Final Touches**

We're going to throw it in the oven and uh it'll be ready in 45 minutes. In the meantime, I'm going to make this port reduction, which is optional but I do think that it adds to the kind of ceremonial presentation of the dish. Not only do you have a mushroom Wellington to cut into, but you also have a sauce to serve it with and the sauce brings a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of tanginess to the rich mushroom Wellington, which I think helps offset it.

**Cooking the Port Reduction**

You want to cook it until it's almost the consistency of Honey or maple syrup. Once your port reduction is almost done, it'll be kind of gurgling quite vigorously. I'm going to strain it get rid of the solids now, and then I'm going to whisk in the butter just to help thicken it and give it a little bit of fat to balance out the acidity.

**The Final Product**

I'm so excited about it, the portions of it have turned kind of like a deep golden brown color, uh it's puffed up, it's firm to the touch, so it's cooked through. You know, when you cut into it, you'll hear that kind of flake Factor we're going to let it sit for about 10 minutes just so it cools a little bit before we cut into it. I'm so excited to take a bite, it looks beautiful, uh we'll see if my hard work paid off.

**The Payoff**

It's so rich, it's really delicious, you've got texture from the nut, deep Umami flavor from the mushroom, a little bit of balance with the cider onions, and then a bright pop of sweetness with the pork reduction. It's so good all you're doing in all of those steps is just building flavor step by step layer by layer and it all delivers when you eat it, it's truly like a whole flavor bomb.

**Creating a Whole Thanksgiving Vegetarian Menu**

I hope you enjoy making this mushroom Wellington as much as I do. I'm actually working on creating a whole Thanksgiving vegetarian menu, which includes other dishes such as roasted butternut squash soup, wild mushroom risotto, and a kale salad with roasted Brussels sprouts and pomegranate seeds. These dishes are sure to impress your guests and will make for a memorable Thanksgiving dinner.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow many times do we think I've said the word caramelized today feel like I've said it like 50 times I'm Alexa wbel I'm a senior staff editor with NT cooking and today we're making my vegetarian mushroom Wellington I never felt massively disappointed as a vegetarian at Thanksgiving because the turkey was never a draw for me the sides were always what I cared most about so I was tasked with creating a vegetarian Thanksgiving centerpiece the goal for the mushroom Wellington was to create a dish that one is a large format dish that can kind of hold attention at the center of the table and then two we wanted something that had a little bit of a theatrical kind of ceremonial element that involves presenting at the table the same way you would carve a turkey it is a stunning dish it's sophisticated it feels like uh truly a bunch of vegetables that kind of have been dressed up in a tuxedo The Tuxedo being flaky buttery golden puff pastry and then it's all served with a p wine reduction whatever mushrooms look fresh in your Market are going to be the ones that you want to use you don't have to have fancy ones you don't have to seek out trumpet mushrooms you don't have to forage whatever's in your Supermarket will be great because you're cooking them down with shallots and garlic and rosemary it's equal parts flavor and presentation when you think about the presentation of your mushroom Wellington when you slice into it you want it to have a beautiful kind of stack of layers I'll start by prepping the portella mushrooms they may or may not have stems depending on where you're buying them at your Supermarket try and resist the urge to just pop off the stems because they might break the cap so you want to just cut off the stem and we're going to reserve it so that we use it in our mushroom dukel filling and then in terms of caramelizing these portabella mushrooms as you can see on some of them they kind of have uh a little curvature at the top of them so if you cut off the little Rim then you're creating more of a flat surface that your mushroom will caramelize in the pan rather than just steaming and collecting moisture you only need a thin layer on top and then the remaining oil will be soaked up by the gills on the other side I'm not trying to use up the oil but mushrooms really can take a lot of oil so it kind of just adds flavor and then helps them caramelize and then I'll season these with salt and pepper all right so I think my oil is hot at this point I'm going to add my mushrooms gillside down and they're going to cook down here for about 4 to 5 minutes until they're caramelized and then we'll flip them I can smell that my mushrooms are starting to smell extra toasted and it's been a few minutes so I'm going to flip them yeah let's see the mushrooms aren't going to cook a whole lot as they bake in the puff pastry the point of caramelizing them in a pan beforehand is to remove a lot of the excess moisture so I'm setting my mushrooms on a wire rack set over a baking sheet and I'm put putting them gillside down the moisture is going to come out on the bottom so if there's any excess moisture in these it'll drip out into this baking sheet rather than dripping into the puff pastry and Having excess liquid so we are going to prep our mushroom dukel we are going to take off the stems because they're quite Woody we're not actually going to cook with these just because they're a little bit more dense and they won't tenderize as well as other stems I'm not using them in this recipe but I save all my stems for stock the rest of the r mushrooms have tender stems so they can all just be tossed into the food processor together but they need to be roughly chopped beforehand kind of just ensures like a slightly more even chopping you'll also want to pulse things in the food processor little by little they won't all fit in at once okay so I've uh prepped one batch the remaining 1/3 of mushrooms I will chop by hand just to make sure that I have kind of nice even pieces you can use the same Skillet that you used before because it all has kind of caramelized mushroom flavor to it and then we're going to cook this down in two batches you really need to cook it in two batches because uh it needs a little bit of space to caramelize rather than just steaming if you put everything in at once it will just kind of become a soggy mess you're going to see the mushrooms go through a few different stages the first thing that they'll do is immediately they'll start to soften then once they soften a bit they'll start to release their liquid and their moisture so they'll start to look a little bit soupy the next stage the moisture will evaporate a little bit they'll start to Get Saucy and then you want to take it to one further stage which is the point at which they're actually starting to caramelize because the liquid has evaporated and they'll turn brown and nutty and that's when they kind of develop the most flavor possible over here we're going to heat a little more oil and do the second batch it's also really exciting to see how other people have cooked this at home people have made the puff pastry from scratch which is pretty incredible they've decorated the puff pastry in all different ways adding Stripes it's really something that you can kind of customize in your own way and design it however you like you can make this dish vegan a lot of store-bought options for puff pastry are actually vegan rather than using butter you can use olive oil as a substitute so my second batch of mushrooms is cooked I'm going to add the first batch back in see SE these with a little bit of pork soy sauce and then I've got some fresh thme that I'm stirring in so they went from being just super earthy and nutty and then the P adds a little bit of kind of acidity and a little more complexity and depth and a little bit of sweetness so I'm going to cook that down just until the flavor of the alcohol disappears and then my mushrooms are seasoned and almost ready to go I've got a big bowl of ice with a little bit of cold water the point of the ice bath is to cool the mushrooms quickly because essentially when you're assembling your mushroom Wellington if any of the contents in it are too hot on the front end the puff pastry can melt I'm going to stir in my walnuts they'll add a little bit more flavor and texture the final component of the mushroom Wellington are these cider caramelized onions we're going to take two onions that have been sliced about 1/4 inch thick and we're going to cook them down in some butter so I'm just stirring them at this point just to make sure that they're kind of evenly coated in butter and sitting in an even layer in the pan I really like the flavor of the caramelized onions with the mushrooms because the mushrooms have such super deep um earthy notes with a lot of umami and then the onions cook with cider which brings a lot of brightness and sweetness and just kind of like a Tangy element the dish to cut the richness the liquid's starting to burn at this stage and the onions aren't quite cooked through so if need be when you're caramelizing onions and they're almost on the brink of burning but not quite cooked you can just add a little splash of water which prevents them from burning and slows down the cooking process a little bit just so that you can cook them further until they soften without burning it's not mandatory but I do have a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar that I'm adding which just kind of boosts the flavor of the onions a little bit more great that's it so now for the fun part I'm going to be assembling the mushroom Wellington all of my components have cooked they've all cooled which is super important you do not want to rush assembling puff pastry with hot ingredients inside and now I'm going to unwrap my puff pastry slow and steady here we go add a little layer of uh allpurpose flour to my parchment paper dusting my rolling pin so the way that you want to roll out puff pastry to make it a little bit more even is to kind of attack it by quadrants rather than doing the whole thing at once and don't be afraid to rotate your puff pastry as needed also when you're rolling out your puff pastry don't feel like you have to apply too much pressure cuz actually when you're applying pressure it makes it distribute weight a little bit more unevenly rather than just kind of gently pushing okay I think that's it I'm going to use half of my mushrooms as the base here the foundation for the Wellington I'm going to try and make it a little bit more compact so it's about 4 in x 10 leaving space on all four sides these also need to go in an even layer you'll see the mushrooms cook down so much so here I'm seeing that some of these mushrooms are a little bit wide but I can overlap a little bit or trim All right so now that I've got three layers I'm going to do one final layer of mushrooms to kind of enrobe the whole thing when you work with the mushrooms after after they've cooled they're actually slightly easier to work with too when they're cold because the fat congeals a little bit so they kind of you can Pat them down to adhere a little bit more easily so you don't have to push it down too much you're just kind of gently shaping it a little bit so that it looks even and then the mushrooms adhere just a little so gently you can stretch the dough slightly as you work if need be we're going to pull this over like so and then the next step is to brush this with an egg wash so that the other side will stick as I lift this I'm just gently stretching it here we go there we go you can kind of maneuver it back and forth as you need when you pull that second flap over you want to make sure that you're just pressing it just gently you don't want to smush it but you want to press it enough to make sure that the two pieces of puff pastry stick together okay so now that our log has been created this way we're going to seal it on both sides I'm going to do a similar approach adding the egg wash just to kind of help seal and what I'm going to do here is just pinch it to seal and then I like to just keep it simple and fold it underneath fold this under look at that we got a beautiful mushroom log and now I'm going to cut my excess parchment you can just use a pairing knife for this applying pressure along the rim so now is the fun part decorating your puff pastry I'm going to brush it with an egg wash again the purpose of it really is to just kind of help build Sheen and help the puff pastry develop a deeper color as it bakes I'm going to take a sharp pairing knife and I'm going to start by drawing a thin line down the center just deep enough to score through the top layer of puff pastry I'm going to do kind of a a nice little cross-hatch pattern but truly you can do whatever you want to your puff pastry now that I've created lines that kind of run the length of the puff pastry I've set the foundation for decorating to create my cross-hatch pattern I'm going to go from one line that is just left of the center just kind of in a downward motion this is my favorite part of building the Wellington but as soon as I finish one strip I kind of rotate to do the opposite for the next one that I'm actually forming a kind of diagonal zigzag pattern everything is fully cooled the puff pastry is looking great we're going to throw it in the oven and uh it'll be ready in 45 minutes and now in the meantime I'm going to make this port reduction the port reduction is optional but I do think that it adds to the kind of ceremonial presentation of the dish CU not only do you have a mushroom Wellington to cut into but you also have a sauce to serve it with and the sauce brings a little bit of sweetness a little bit of kind of tanginess to the rich mushroom Wellington which I think help helps offset it you want to cook it until it's almost the consistency of Honey or maple syrup once your Port reduction is almost done it'll be kind of gurgling quite vigorously I'm going to strain it get rid of the solids now I'm going to whisk in the butter just to help thicken it and give it a little bit of fat to balance out the acidity and I'm going to season it with a little bit of salt and pepper that looks beautiful I'm so excited about it the portions of it have turned kind of like a deep golden brown color uh it's puffed up it's firm to the touch so it's cooked through you you know it'll be you can hear that kind of flake Factor we're going to let it sit for about 10 minutes just so it cools a little bit before we cut into it I'm so excited to take a bite it looks beautiful uh we'll see if my hard work paid off it's so rich it's really delicious you've got texture from the nut deep Umami flavor from the mushroom a little bit of balance with the cider onions and and then a bright pop of sweetness with the pork reduction it's so good all you're doing in all of those steps is just building flavor step by step layer by layer and it all delivers when you eat it it's truly like a whole flavor bomb I hope you try my mushroom Wellington payoff is so Grand and it truly tastes as good as it looks I'm creating a whole Thanksgiving vegetarian menu for New York Times you can find it online along with tons of other vegetarian Thanksgiving optionshow many times do we think I've said the word caramelized today feel like I've said it like 50 times I'm Alexa wbel I'm a senior staff editor with NT cooking and today we're making my vegetarian mushroom Wellington I never felt massively disappointed as a vegetarian at Thanksgiving because the turkey was never a draw for me the sides were always what I cared most about so I was tasked with creating a vegetarian Thanksgiving centerpiece the goal for the mushroom Wellington was to create a dish that one is a large format dish that can kind of hold attention at the center of the table and then two we wanted something that had a little bit of a theatrical kind of ceremonial element that involves presenting at the table the same way you would carve a turkey it is a stunning dish it's sophisticated it feels like uh truly a bunch of vegetables that kind of have been dressed up in a tuxedo The Tuxedo being flaky buttery golden puff pastry and then it's all served with a p wine reduction whatever mushrooms look fresh in your Market are going to be the ones that you want to use you don't have to have fancy ones you don't have to seek out trumpet mushrooms you don't have to forage whatever's in your Supermarket will be great because you're cooking them down with shallots and garlic and rosemary it's equal parts flavor and presentation when you think about the presentation of your mushroom Wellington when you slice into it you want it to have a beautiful kind of stack of layers I'll start by prepping the portella mushrooms they may or may not have stems depending on where you're buying them at your Supermarket try and resist the urge to just pop off the stems because they might break the cap so you want to just cut off the stem and we're going to reserve it so that we use it in our mushroom dukel filling and then in terms of caramelizing these portabella mushrooms as you can see on some of them they kind of have uh a little curvature at the top of them so if you cut off the little Rim then you're creating more of a flat surface that your mushroom will caramelize in the pan rather than just steaming and collecting moisture you only need a thin layer on top and then the remaining oil will be soaked up by the gills on the other side I'm not trying to use up the oil but mushrooms really can take a lot of oil so it kind of just adds flavor and then helps them caramelize and then I'll season these with salt and pepper all right so I think my oil is hot at this point I'm going to add my mushrooms gillside down and they're going to cook down here for about 4 to 5 minutes until they're caramelized and then we'll flip them I can smell that my mushrooms are starting to smell extra toasted and it's been a few minutes so I'm going to flip them yeah let's see the mushrooms aren't going to cook a whole lot as they bake in the puff pastry the point of caramelizing them in a pan beforehand is to remove a lot of the excess moisture so I'm setting my mushrooms on a wire rack set over a baking sheet and I'm put putting them gillside down the moisture is going to come out on the bottom so if there's any excess moisture in these it'll drip out into this baking sheet rather than dripping into the puff pastry and Having excess liquid so we are going to prep our mushroom dukel we are going to take off the stems because they're quite Woody we're not actually going to cook with these just because they're a little bit more dense and they won't tenderize as well as other stems I'm not using them in this recipe but I save all my stems for stock the rest of the r mushrooms have tender stems so they can all just be tossed into the food processor together but they need to be roughly chopped beforehand kind of just ensures like a slightly more even chopping you'll also want to pulse things in the food processor little by little they won't all fit in at once okay so I've uh prepped one batch the remaining 1/3 of mushrooms I will chop by hand just to make sure that I have kind of nice even pieces you can use the same Skillet that you used before because it all has kind of caramelized mushroom flavor to it and then we're going to cook this down in two batches you really need to cook it in two batches because uh it needs a little bit of space to caramelize rather than just steaming if you put everything in at once it will just kind of become a soggy mess you're going to see the mushrooms go through a few different stages the first thing that they'll do is immediately they'll start to soften then once they soften a bit they'll start to release their liquid and their moisture so they'll start to look a little bit soupy the next stage the moisture will evaporate a little bit they'll start to Get Saucy and then you want to take it to one further stage which is the point at which they're actually starting to caramelize because the liquid has evaporated and they'll turn brown and nutty and that's when they kind of develop the most flavor possible over here we're going to heat a little more oil and do the second batch it's also really exciting to see how other people have cooked this at home people have made the puff pastry from scratch which is pretty incredible they've decorated the puff pastry in all different ways adding Stripes it's really something that you can kind of customize in your own way and design it however you like you can make this dish vegan a lot of store-bought options for puff pastry are actually vegan rather than using butter you can use olive oil as a substitute so my second batch of mushrooms is cooked I'm going to add the first batch back in see SE these with a little bit of pork soy sauce and then I've got some fresh thme that I'm stirring in so they went from being just super earthy and nutty and then the P adds a little bit of kind of acidity and a little more complexity and depth and a little bit of sweetness so I'm going to cook that down just until the flavor of the alcohol disappears and then my mushrooms are seasoned and almost ready to go I've got a big bowl of ice with a little bit of cold water the point of the ice bath is to cool the mushrooms quickly because essentially when you're assembling your mushroom Wellington if any of the contents in it are too hot on the front end the puff pastry can melt I'm going to stir in my walnuts they'll add a little bit more flavor and texture the final component of the mushroom Wellington are these cider caramelized onions we're going to take two onions that have been sliced about 1/4 inch thick and we're going to cook them down in some butter so I'm just stirring them at this point just to make sure that they're kind of evenly coated in butter and sitting in an even layer in the pan I really like the flavor of the caramelized onions with the mushrooms because the mushrooms have such super deep um earthy notes with a lot of umami and then the onions cook with cider which brings a lot of brightness and sweetness and just kind of like a Tangy element the dish to cut the richness the liquid's starting to burn at this stage and the onions aren't quite cooked through so if need be when you're caramelizing onions and they're almost on the brink of burning but not quite cooked you can just add a little splash of water which prevents them from burning and slows down the cooking process a little bit just so that you can cook them further until they soften without burning it's not mandatory but I do have a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar that I'm adding which just kind of boosts the flavor of the onions a little bit more great that's it so now for the fun part I'm going to be assembling the mushroom Wellington all of my components have cooked they've all cooled which is super important you do not want to rush assembling puff pastry with hot ingredients inside and now I'm going to unwrap my puff pastry slow and steady here we go add a little layer of uh allpurpose flour to my parchment paper dusting my rolling pin so the way that you want to roll out puff pastry to make it a little bit more even is to kind of attack it by quadrants rather than doing the whole thing at once and don't be afraid to rotate your puff pastry as needed also when you're rolling out your puff pastry don't feel like you have to apply too much pressure cuz actually when you're applying pressure it makes it distribute weight a little bit more unevenly rather than just kind of gently pushing okay I think that's it I'm going to use half of my mushrooms as the base here the foundation for the Wellington I'm going to try and make it a little bit more compact so it's about 4 in x 10 leaving space on all four sides these also need to go in an even layer you'll see the mushrooms cook down so much so here I'm seeing that some of these mushrooms are a little bit wide but I can overlap a little bit or trim All right so now that I've got three layers I'm going to do one final layer of mushrooms to kind of enrobe the whole thing when you work with the mushrooms after after they've cooled they're actually slightly easier to work with too when they're cold because the fat congeals a little bit so they kind of you can Pat them down to adhere a little bit more easily so you don't have to push it down too much you're just kind of gently shaping it a little bit so that it looks even and then the mushrooms adhere just a little so gently you can stretch the dough slightly as you work if need be we're going to pull this over like so and then the next step is to brush this with an egg wash so that the other side will stick as I lift this I'm just gently stretching it here we go there we go you can kind of maneuver it back and forth as you need when you pull that second flap over you want to make sure that you're just pressing it just gently you don't want to smush it but you want to press it enough to make sure that the two pieces of puff pastry stick together okay so now that our log has been created this way we're going to seal it on both sides I'm going to do a similar approach adding the egg wash just to kind of help seal and what I'm going to do here is just pinch it to seal and then I like to just keep it simple and fold it underneath fold this under look at that we got a beautiful mushroom log and now I'm going to cut my excess parchment you can just use a pairing knife for this applying pressure along the rim so now is the fun part decorating your puff pastry I'm going to brush it with an egg wash again the purpose of it really is to just kind of help build Sheen and help the puff pastry develop a deeper color as it bakes I'm going to take a sharp pairing knife and I'm going to start by drawing a thin line down the center just deep enough to score through the top layer of puff pastry I'm going to do kind of a a nice little cross-hatch pattern but truly you can do whatever you want to your puff pastry now that I've created lines that kind of run the length of the puff pastry I've set the foundation for decorating to create my cross-hatch pattern I'm going to go from one line that is just left of the center just kind of in a downward motion this is my favorite part of building the Wellington but as soon as I finish one strip I kind of rotate to do the opposite for the next one that I'm actually forming a kind of diagonal zigzag pattern everything is fully cooled the puff pastry is looking great we're going to throw it in the oven and uh it'll be ready in 45 minutes and now in the meantime I'm going to make this port reduction the port reduction is optional but I do think that it adds to the kind of ceremonial presentation of the dish CU not only do you have a mushroom Wellington to cut into but you also have a sauce to serve it with and the sauce brings a little bit of sweetness a little bit of kind of tanginess to the rich mushroom Wellington which I think help helps offset it you want to cook it until it's almost the consistency of Honey or maple syrup once your Port reduction is almost done it'll be kind of gurgling quite vigorously I'm going to strain it get rid of the solids now I'm going to whisk in the butter just to help thicken it and give it a little bit of fat to balance out the acidity and I'm going to season it with a little bit of salt and pepper that looks beautiful I'm so excited about it the portions of it have turned kind of like a deep golden brown color uh it's puffed up it's firm to the touch so it's cooked through you you know it'll be you can hear that kind of flake Factor we're going to let it sit for about 10 minutes just so it cools a little bit before we cut into it I'm so excited to take a bite it looks beautiful uh we'll see if my hard work paid off it's so rich it's really delicious you've got texture from the nut deep Umami flavor from the mushroom a little bit of balance with the cider onions and and then a bright pop of sweetness with the pork reduction it's so good all you're doing in all of those steps is just building flavor step by step layer by layer and it all delivers when you eat it it's truly like a whole flavor bomb I hope you try my mushroom Wellington payoff is so Grand and it truly tastes as good as it looks I'm creating a whole Thanksgiving vegetarian menu for New York Times you can find it online along with tons of other vegetarian Thanksgiving options\n"