Beef Wellington Question

@cortguitarman‌
I'm not sure of the procedure or order of how you cooked yours but I will offer what I can. The thing that I found that helps the most is to cook the meat first. Depending on how done you want the meat at serving stop the cooking 15 degrees before because it will cook further during the cooking of the pastry. I prefer rare so I cook the meat to around 105 internal then pull and wrap with the pastry and then back on the cooker at 450 to cook the pastry until it is golden brown. The precooking of the meat reduces the amount of rendering from the meat. It's this rendering that usually causes the pastry to be soggy. Other things can cause soggyness as well but usually the meat renderings are the culprit. This has worked well for me. Again just be sure to stop the meat about 15 degrees short of your target as it will cook some more during the cooking of the pastry and this should solve your issue. This tip was given to me by my awesome wife. I hope this helps my friend.

@Austin Egghead‌
I presumed that he used a cooling rack and that might have been wrong on my part. Glad you pointed it out as you are correct that a rack is almost a must to achieve uniform results. Never tried the fridge overnight thing but it sounds interesting and I'm going to give it a try. Thanks for sharing my friend.

I have never done a Beef Wellington, but I understand it contains a duxelle.

My wife made a puff pastry appetizer which I would cook on the egg.  It was a duxelles in a folded pastry with a little herbed goat cheese dollop.

She would cook that duxelles down until it looked like it was almost crumbly.  It needs to be very dry or it will exude water. 

Tenderloin doesn't render anything (in terms of fat), and the temperature it is cooked to (125-130) means very little water or juices will come from it.

It's the mushrooms.  Cook them until you think they have given up their water.  And then cook them longer.

Phyllo dough is an odd rercommendation.  Puff pastry has fat in many hundreds of interlayers.  Fat is a barrier to water, where Phyllo dough is merely exceptionally thin layers of dough itself, without fat.

Someone mentioned searing.  But searing doesn't seal in any juices, it causes them.  But the meat should be seared, for flavor.  And it should be refrigerated after searing anyway, if I understand it correctly.  The searing is for flavor.  It should not cause any excess water to come from the meat when slow roasted though.

I may need to try this.  I just don't have any guests in the near future who could eat this thing with me.

HDumptyEsq said:

After you apply the duxelle (very dry) to a mustard glaze over the tenderloin, wrap the whole thing in overlapping thinly sliced ham or prosciuto. It seems to hold back the moisture until serving time. Tyler Florence from the Food Network has a great recipe.

Or bresaola

I have made thousands of Wellingtons in my career.

This issue is easy to resolve. As noted above make sure your duxelle is "dry", not bone dry but definitely not wet either. Once that part is out of the way the issue here is the temperature it is cooked at.

Think of it this way. Have you ever cooked stir fry or stew beef and put it a pan that was not hot enough? the moisture will seep out and it will look like its boiling in its own juices. This is the same issue.

 You have to get the oven (egg) very hot 400F + and not let it drop too much, same as overloading an oven too much, it will take too long for your oven (egg) to recuperate the initial heat, thus dropping your temp creating a less intense heat and letting the meat seep out juices.