worth the whisk

Christmas Dinner - Roast Beef

I decided to do a roast for Christmas, having never done one before.  We did a “trial run” a week prior with a Top Round Roast.  It was pretty good but difficult to cut with a vein of fat running right through the middle.  At $2.59 a pound it was a steal, but we decided it might be worth going up a level or two.  For the real dinner we decided to go with a sirloin roast, which I’d heard the butcher recommend to another customer.  The per-pound price was double, but it was worth it.  The fat was all on the top (which made it easy to trim off a little before cooking, and then trim off entirely once on your plate) and the roast had a nice symmetrical shape, making it easy to cut, and to cook evenly.

I wanted a nice medium/medium-rare roast - not a pot roast - which means cooking it on a rack, no water in the pan, no cover.

I used Nigella’s cooking instructions (and a meat thermometer).  We had a 5.15 pound roast, which I had in the oven for about an hour and a half.  I wasn’t sure of how rare everyone liked their beef, and this amount of time worked out great, I got it up to 140/145 before taking it out of the oven (it will rise another 10 degrees, according to the million recipes I looked at).  It worked out great as the meat was still very tender, and the center of the roast was as pink as I like, while there slices on the ends for those who like it more well-done.

For flavor, I covered the roast in fresh ground black peppers, and very thin slices of garlic.  I swear I read this in an Emeril recipe on FoodNetwork.com  but can’t find it now.  It was delicious.

For gravy, I cheated and used canned, but mixed in the drippings in the pan while I heated it up.  Delicious (and good that I had the cans because there wasn’t that much run-off, and there were 8 people!)

Using the leftovers

We had maybe 1/5 of the roast left over, if that.  For dinner the other night, we sliced it thin, and nuked it for a minute or so, with a damp paper towel over top of the plate.  Put the warmed meat on some fresh and delicious sourdough bread.  We heated up some beef broth with a little garlic, and a little condensed au jus.  Voila - french dips.