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Roast Beef
Posted By Kerri
Did I mention it was raining again today? We started talking about what to have for lunch before breakfast and it took us about 10 seconds to decide on roast beef. Stephen braved the weather to go in search of beef (well, go to the shop…it’s not like we live on a rambling country estate after all) and came back with some topside (the best cut for roasting according to the seller) and a selection of vegetables, all from the local Farmer’s Market.
According to the blog archive, we haven’t had proper roast beef and yourshire puddings since new year’s eve! Seeing as this is one of our favourites it’s a good job we rectified this today.
The beef was sprinkled with a little flour and mustard powder (a Delia tip) and lots of black pepper before being roasted on an onion (another Delia tip I think, it’s a similar technique to using a rack and means the meat doesn’t sit in a lot of fat; it also makes for great gravy) for about 40 minutes. We use a meat thermometer to ensure the meat is cooked the way we like it: pink.
Plenty of roast potaoes and, of course, yorkshire pudding, with lots of Stephen’s brilliant gravy definitely livened up a grey, wintery day.
Aug 19th, 2007
That looks gorgeous–perfect beef, and ideal for our horrible weather. Do you do one large yorkshire? I’m not brilliant at them, which is silly as they’re not complex…some people just have a knack I think.
The beef looks really pink in the photograph, I’m not sure it was quite as pink as that in real life. It was tasty though.
I think you’re right about the knack, Stephen definitely has it. It’s baking though isn’t it, and I’m just rubbish at it!
*drool* thats making me feel so hungry!
I think the beef was almost as pink as it looks in that picture; it was really nice and tender and full of flavour. Pity my carving skills weren’t quite up to it – my attempt to carve nice thin slices meant that we had thin slices but they were all rather small. Still tasty though.
I’d had a chat with the man at the market about the cut; he had topside and silverside. He said the silverside was better if we wanted to make sandwiches afterwards because the open texture made it more suitable for sandwiches. I said that sandwiches were a lot further down on my priority list than the roast dinner itself, so I went for the topside. I tried to drum the name of the farm that the stall was from into my brain by repeating it over and over, but managed to forget by the time I got home!
Fiona yes, we did make one big Yorkshire pudding. We stuck it in once the beef was out and resting and turned up the oven. We left the potatoes in too as they needed to be crisped up; the problem with cooking a relatively small piece of beef rare is that it’s done long before the potatoes are.
Hello,
I’ve just stumbled upon your blog, really good reading and great photos!
I was interested that it was suggested to you that topside is the best joint for roasting, after having read this thread:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbfood/F2670471?thread=4231729&show=100
It looks delicious though!
Hi L, thanks for the comments! 🙂
About the cut of beef… the choice I was faced with at the time was topside vs silverside and topside definitely won out there. I was determined to buy it from the stall at the farmer’s market rather than go to the supermarket (going to the supermarket seems like cheating when there is a perfectly good farmer’s market close by!), so I was limited to those two choices.
However, despite any advice to the contrary on the web or elsewhere, roasting it did turn out rather well; tender and full of flavour. Perhaps it was a combination of good quality meat and being sliced very thinly.