Alton Brown's Pork Wellington

There is nothing finer than a lazy Sunday watching our backlog of Food Network shows while our little one naps. Our favorite Food Network host is Alton Brown and our latest habit is watching his old Good Eats episodes.

I have been watching Alton since I was in high school, which is a long time. (I feel old just thinking about it.) His gleeful and nerdy approach to cooking is infectious and right in line with my own nerdy personality. 

I mean...he is Thyme Lord after all... And he is friends with Adam Savage from Mythbusters! 

(Sorry, I just nerded out a little bit.)

The steps are easy to follow and the science behind it all becoming yummy goodness is really very interesting. Every so often, the recipes look so easy or the food looks so good that we just have to make it ourselves.

Recently, we watched the episode called "Tender is the Pork" (listed on Food Network as Episode EA1301H) about the great versatility of pork, especially as an alternative to chicken. Pork is great favorite of mine, though I am a carnivore at heart so any meat will do nicely. The Pork Wellington recipe caught our eye out of all the recipes that Alton offered in the episode.

Beef Wellington's always seemed to be so difficult to ever consider making at home. It was one of those fancy entrees you see on an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen (another favorite TV chef and our kid's namesake) and too time intensive and technical to try in our home kitchen.
But Alton made it look so easy, we knew we just had to try it ourselves. 

You can find the Food Network recipe here. 

Continue below to see each step of our cooking adventure.

First, we gathered our ingredients.
The pork tenderloin has been relieved of its silver skin and sliced in half (long-ways). We had gathered fresh thyme from our garden and had kosher salt and fresh ground pepper ready to go. The frozen puff pastry is taking a sweet little nap in a warm area by the oven wrapped in a towel so it can defrost a bit.




The prosciutto has been laid out on wax paper and the dried apples have been chopped up. We recommend using parchment paper with the prosciutto (we ran out). It stuck to the wax paper alot.

We sandwiched the prosciutto between two sheets of wax paper and rolled a rolling pin over it to knit the fat together.

Next, the seasonings are sprinkled evenly around on the prosciutto and the tenderloin is laid out down the center. The dried apples are spread out evenly between the two pieces of pork.



Next comes the rolling of the meat.



This took a long time with the wax paper. I can only guess that the parchment (per the recipe) would have worked much better. Now, we have a log of pork! (Insert jokes here.)



Next we prepare the puff pastry dough. It gets rolled out to a rectangle, about 14" x 12". We spread a layer of mustard down the center to encircle the pork.



Before completely rolling the pork into the pastry dough, leave a few inches of dough open and coat it with a bit of egg and water mixture. Now close it on up.



Transfer the Wellington to a parchment lined pan (this is all the parchment that we had) and coat the top with the same egg and water mixture as before. Now place in the oven and bake for about 25 to 30 minutes at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit).



This is the golden, delicious Wellington that came out of the oven.



Doesn't it look yummy?



Let the Wellington sit a bit so that all the yummy juices do not run out when you cut into it.
I hope this makes you want to try it out on your own. You will not be disappointed!