Gordon Ramsay and Nick DiGiovanni break beefy world record on YouTube!
Having teamed up with an insane group of elite food YouTubers, Gordon Ramsay and his Master Chef prodigy Nick DiGiovanni have broken the world record for biggest ever beef wellington.
Any fan of YouTube's fantastic food scene was pleasantly surprised to see Nick DiGiovanni's awesome new video when it dropped on June 10.
Teaming up with world-famous chef Gordon Ramsay, along with YouTube giants like Guga, Max the Meat Guy, and The Golden Balance, DiGiovanni and Ramsay set out to achieve something truly spectacular.
Nick DiGiovanni is known to fight for some pretty spectacular world records, but this one was something special: The world's biggest ever beef wellington.
Chef Ramsay got on the sauce, and the others got baking, to achieve this meat feat!
Gordon Ramsay and Nick DiGiovanni break world record for biggest beef wellington
Since Nick DiGiovanni left Master Chef in Season 10, where he finished in third place, the fantastic chef has made a name for himself with his 10-million-subscriber-strong YouTube channel. Now, along with a number of other big name food influencers and his former judge Gordon Ramsay, he has set out to achieve something truly extraordinary.
Entering into the fold we have an all-time classic: Beef wellington, a giant piece of beef wrapped in a mushroom paste (duxelle), cured ham, crepes, and puff pastry. It's a staple of good English cooking, Ramsay's signature dish, a hard meal to get right, and DiGiovanni's next world record ambition.
Fun fact: While most people attribute beef wellington to the UK, it's actually just as American as it is British. Famous for being former president Richard Nixon's favorite meal, the beef wellington appeared in Los Angeles as early as 1903 and New York since the 1930s. Nowadays, it's often easier to find a good wellington in the Big Apple than it is to find one in ol' London town.
The goal at the heart of this record attempt was to make their meat dish weigh higher than fifty pounds, the previous confirmed Guinness World Record.
To do so, the team split up. Ramsay was tasked with making the sauce, Max and Guga dealt with the beef, the Golden Balance dealt with the duxelle, and Nick dealt with the prosciutto.
After a hilarious video full of ups and downs and twists and turns, the team achieved their goal and made the biggest beef wellington ever recorded. It was so good that not only did DiGiovanni score his much-wanted accolade, but the appreciation and approval of Gordon Ramsay himself: "That is delicious!"
Together with the team, Nick DiGiovanni scored big-time with his latest world record, creating a beef wellington so big that it had to go into a commercial oven because it wouldn't fit in his home stove. This magnificent achievement was adjudicated and confirmed by Guinness World Records.
How heavy was the biggest beef wellington ever cooked?
The biggest beef wellington ever made was indeed cooked by Nick DiGiovanni and the gang and weighed a whopping 56.79 pounds when it came out of the oven. This is, to be precise, 18.14 times the size of your average beef wellington (according to Guinness World Records, which says the average wellington is 3.13 pounds). To give you a bit of context, that's around the weight of a 6-8 year old kid.
Nick DiGiovanni put the beef wellington together using Gordon Ramsay's personal recipe, the same recipe that is used as the flagship dish on his popular reality television show Hell's Kitchen. In fact, the video even started with a little bit of advice from the Kitchen Nightmares star: "Don't f**k it up!"
"First you've got to get that sear - no color, no flavor. Then that duxelle, then the prosciutto, then the crepes, and then of course that delicious flaky pastry."
What was the previous biggest beef wellington?
While little-to-no information is available publically regarding the previous record holder for biggest beef wellington, we do know that it weighed about 45 pounds (measurements were taken and reported in kilograms, and sat at 20 kg).
With this in mind, it is clear that Nick DiGiovanni broke the standing record by more than ten pounds when he undertook the challenge in May 2023. Filming a good number of weeks before his video was published, the YouTuber also kept mentioning that to beat the record, he knew his dish needed to weigh more than 50 pounds - a number that's actually higher than the one previously quoted by Guinness World Records.
Whatever the true number, though, one thing is for certain: This was one hefty chunk of meat!
What other world records has Nick DiGiovanni broken?
DiGiovanni has become famous for his repeated world record attempts, not all of which have been successful. Recording most for his engaged YouTube audience, he has a total of eight world records under his belt, many of which were achieved alongside friends and fellow YouTubers.
Here's Nick DiGiovanni's full list of world record accolades:
- Largest cake pop; 97lb, 8.52oz (November 2021)
- Largest chicken nugget; 47.2lb (June 2022)
- Most fast food restaurants visited in 24 hours; 69 restaurants (August 2021)
- Fasted time to filet a ten-pound fish; 1 minute exactly (October 2021)
- Largest ever sushi roll; 7ft (October 2021)
- Largest fortune cookie; 3.2lb (November 2021)
- Largest number of turkeys donated in 24 hours; 7620 turkeys (November 2011)
- Largest beef wellington; 56.79lb (May 2023)
With such a large number of world records tucked under his belt, we can't imagine DiGiovanni slowing down anytime soon. Whether he can beat this all-star cast for his next record, though, is yet to be seen!
Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO/Wirestock/Cinema Publishers Collection