Six years ago, while attending a media conference at The Goring Hotel in London, we were discussing the options of starting a Facebook page dedicated to the burgeoning burger scene in Malta. While enjoying one of the specialties of Chef Cooper, the Beef Wellington, little did we know that one day we would see a burger version of the time-honoured English dish.
Just Burger keep working harder at their now-unstoppable trend, to create a memorable burger every month. All their monthly special burgers have two things in common: they taste good, and they are only available for 30 days! This time around, David and the culinary team at Just Burger have engineered a beef Wellington in a bun. We were really intrigued by this premise when we heard the news. Surely, the place of beef Wellington in on a plate, not between two half buns. Or not? We had to drive all the way to Sliema to see for ourselves if the September burger is anything as good as the all-time popular Asian-flavoured burger from last month.
The classic Beef Wellington is generally a seared fillet steak coated with Duxelles (a mixture of mushrooms and onions, sautéed in butter and wine or alcohol, and reduced to a paste), wrapped in puff pastry and finished in the oven. Some gourmet versions are covered in foie gras. The dish is allegedly named after Arthur Wellesley, who rose to national hero level after defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Hence he was prized with the title of first Duke of Wellington. He loved a dish of beef tenderloin, mushroom & truffle pate with wine, all cooked inside a pastry closure, which was an already well-sought dish at that time in France, known as Filet de Boeuf en Croute. His English chef initially dubbed the dish as Wellington Steak and accompanied it by one or two sauces. The origins of the name are murky and could be plain hearsay. For all we know, it could well have been named after the town of Wellington in New Zealand! We wish we had a time-machine to confirm all; whatever the case, the crusted beef dish is here to stay!
What David from Just Burger did was take all the main elements of the Wellington and stack them together to create a tower of a burger. At the very base, there is a bed of Duxelles made from finely chopped mushrooms and onions, garlic, truffle paste and seasoned with herbs. It’s different from the thick Duxelles jam of the Wellington, but all the components are there. Fresh baby spinach leaves go on top. They are raw and taste a bit minerally and are the only leafy alkaline ingredient, meant to balance the rest of the burger. Next up is a layer of puff pastry. It’s flaky, light and has a buttery flavour infused with herbs. The golden puff pastry was freshly baked and tastes really crunchy. The pastry is dosed with a portion of chicken gravy, made in-house. The gravy is thick and pasty and brings a salty element in play. It’s a welcome change to the usual mayo/ketchup sauce we find in most burgers. The gravy oozes as soon as you take a bite, flooding the beef in a burst of warm flavour. The weather has just turned a tad colder, making this heavy burger a joy to consume.
The central element of every Just Burger is the beef patty. It’s a signature 140g Angus Beef patty, minced and grilled on the day, in the Just Burger kitchen. The beef is juicy even though we asked for a well-cooked through burger. These guys have erased the word “dry meat” from their vocabulary, and we love that! The beef has a nice dense texture, is not too fatty, and is as tasty as a cut of Angus beef goes. There are two slices of Serrano ham on top. Most classic versions of the Beef Wellington do not feature any kind of ham, but many modern recipes do. This is dry-cured Spanish ham which is similar to Italian Prosciutto but is less fatty and has a more concentrated taste. The ham is crispy and has a pleasant aroma. It also adds a sharp flavor to balance all the richness of the meat. After some thought, we think that this Spanish element was a wise addition.
The burger is topped with another layer of puff pastry and gravy. We foresaw that this would be an open burger, because of the many layers; however, all the ingredients are stacked together in a well thought out way, and the whole burger holds well together, making it easy to bite through all this goodness in a bun. The entire concoction of ingredients is one of the richest and most flavourful burgers we’ve eaten these last few months. Making a Beef Wellington from scratch is a hard task, and turning such a classic into a burger is nothing less than an insane amount of work! So we have to bow at the kitchen team for making an effort to create such a burger, which as far as we know, is a first in Malta. This burger takes everything that’s instinctively pleasurable about eating an Angus burger and racks it up to further heights. If you are only an occasional burger lover, you owe it to yourself to try this burger, at least once in your life. For burger aficionados, you need to consume one or two of these every week, for all September!
