Ina Garten’s Filet of Beef with Mustard Horseradish Sauce | Barefoot Contessa | Food Network

Three things I love about filet beef with mustardhorseradish sauce are fillet beef may be a little expensive to buy but it's so easy to prepI don't mind the second thing is the sauce is like five ingredients whisked together in adish that's it and the third one is that I have this great system so the filet beef comes outperfectly roasted every time let's go make it so let's roast a filet so I know this looksa little daunting but it's not trust me so I asked the butcher to trim and tie it so trimmingis taking off all the fat I know that little layer of silver that's sometimes on it taking that offtoo and then tying it so it's nice and round and sometimes there's like this little end help tie itunder and the point of tying it like these little strings is to make sure that it's very even sothe beginning the middle and the end all cook at.

Exactly the same time so it's going to be perfectso that's the fillet and I'm gonna just dry the outside and the point of this is so the butterthat I'm going to put on the outside sticks to it that's the drawing so two tablespoons of roomtemperature butter you want to be really soft and then I just do it with my hands just slatherit on the outside and the point of this is to keep the meat really moist also then the salt andpepper that I'm going to add is going to stick to it I actually did this with Jay Leno oncea long time ago on TV I had him rubbing butter on a filet of beef if you can't make a jokeout of that he doesn't deserve to be a comic it was really fun okay so I'm going to just rubthis on the outside get better all evenly all over it good and messy tablespoon of salt I knowit's a lot but you really want you've got a whole.

Filet beef to season I want to make sure it'sreally well seasoned and a tablespoon of pepper slippery hands this is such a great dish for a holiday it'snot really Tuesday night dinner but it's for a holiday or for a special event so easy to doand people are so impressed that you can make a whole filet of beef okay I'm just gonna washmy hands into the oven 500 Degrees it's really hot make sure your oven's very clean otherwiseit'll smoke for 22 minutes for rare but I like it medium rare so I'm going to do it for 25 minutesand it comes out perfectly every time next mustard horseshire sauce say that 10 timesfast okay so first I need one and a half cups of mayonnaise mayonnaise is a great base for saucethe key is that it doesn't taste like mayonnaise.

When I have the store I would make all these likechicken salad minutes but I'd add white wine or mustard or something to take away that kind ofdistinctive mayonnaise flavor three tablespoons of Dijon mustard and then because I want it to looklike mustard and taste like mustard one and a half tablespoons of coarse grain mustard and then yousee the grains of mustard and that kind of little bite of mustard which is great tablespoon ofhorseradish not too much because it's really sharp and a third of a cup of sour cream so themayonnaise and sour cream together kind of like mess the fact that you started with mayonnaiseshould be about a third of a cup and salt and just whisk it all together so you'vegot a really great high low thing really fancy filet beef and a sauce that youmade from ingredients in your pantry.

I almost didn't even have to shop forthem I'm just gonna put this in a bowl maybe a simple sauce but you put in a fancy Bowllooks fancy I actually collect these hotel Silver bowls they're really great it's kind of notyour mother's fancy silver it's like silver that hotels used to use so it has that patinaI love it and that's the sauce okay the beef's almost done I'm going to take it out to rest andthen we're going to go to the Garden so I'll take the filet Out Boy does that look good I'll coverit in foil and let it rest while I head outside so when it comes to the Garden I'vejust recently redone it I mean the truth is I'm always redoingit but instead of adding things I seem to be taking things away so make it simplerand simpler so I've got big box wood well.

That used to be boxwood now ilex hedgesbig squares Willows and the four corners aren't they crazy I love the Willows I thinkthey're really fun and this is Nepeta no it's not napita actually it's kalamintha it'sNapa in the spring but Calumet the later beautiful big white flowers and I love the geraniums aren't they crazy theyjust get bigger and bigger and bigger all purple but it's really simple it's not complicatedright and then over here I've got all kinds of cutting flowers and vegetables got white zinnias a riot of zinnias of course I onlyuse the white ones lots of butterflies and this is the craziest thing is thebiggest basil I've ever seen in my life.

I think it's time to make pesto I would say sothat's crazy it's almost as big as me but I need parsley I think it'd be really nice on the platterso like big bunch of parsley with a filet beef that'll be really great I've got celery here this looks pretty good doesn't it celeryokay let's go back to the filet beef I'm going to show you how tocarve a fillet beef and trust me it's so much easier than like a standing ribroast okay so I think it should be perfect it's been resting how gorgeous is that so we'llput it on the board the first thing I need to do still really hot it's amazing how hot it staysunder that foil first thing I need to do is get rid of all the strings nobody wants to eatstring so I'm just going to take each string off.

First time I ever had a whole filet of beefwas at a friend's house in Washington in the 70s Jeffrey and I were invited to somebody'shouse for dinner it was a guy a single guy was making dinner and I thought oh this isgoing to be really bad and the days when I was making like Julia Child's recipes reallyfancy French things I was teaching myself how to cook and I said to Jeffrey we should probablyeat something before we go to this guy's house because I thought it was going to be terribleand when we got there he had roasted an entire filet of beef which I thought was so elegantI couldn't believe it he baked his own bread and he made something like chocolate moussefor dessert it was just stunning absolutely stunning and after that I actually decided thatmy cooking should be simpler that it shouldn't be.

So sort of French and fancy it should be reallyelegant and really simple I wonder if he knows how much of an influence he had on me all theway from the 70s and one thing about having a filet beef in your repertoire is you can alwaysmake it with lots of different sauces and you've got something totally different so this is withmustard and horseradish sauce but I make it with a blue cheese sauce by just boiling heavy creamand adding blue cheese to it which is so good I sometimes do it with a basil parmesan mayonnaiseso it's like a summer dish or a winter dish one filet beef lots of different ways okay sothis is done just takes a second but it's really important to take the string off and then I'llshow you how you slice it and this is the moment I always think I hope it's perfect and the goodnews is it always is so I like sort of thicker.

Slices and each person gets two slices so wow nowtell me that isn't perfectly cooked filet beef so when I put it on the platter I actuallyslice most of it but not the whole thing I think it looks nicer to have a big piece atthe end you can always slice more one filet beef will serve like 10 people that's why it'sgreat for parties or for holidays and if they're leftovers you can make little sandwiches thenext day very elegant sandwiches I'm just using a small sharp slicing knife truly just make sureit's Sharp get nice slices okay so onto a platter we've got a big long narrow platter perfectI'm going to put the big piece on the back just like that and then try as muchas I can to put this right next to it yeah I did it and then some parsley.

Just to make it look better always looksbetter with something green on the plate just right down here and mustard horseradish sauceit's great together and happily there's always a little bit of filet beef left over for whoevercarved it me it's so tender and so flavorful it's really great and that's Rose forlay beef that's pretty easy right and the mustard horseradish sauce even easier yourfriends are going to be completely knocked out this recipe and more can be foundin my book Barefoot Contessa parties