Where’s the Beef?

After a long hot summer, winter finally arrived (for a few weeks) in Austin, Texas.  This gave us the opportunity to make a classic, heavy cold weather dish: Roast Beef with mashed potatoes and gravy.  This is one of those dishes that neither of our families had ever prepared.  Pretty sure the only time I’d had roast beef before was as a deli meat.

Fun fact: Roast Beef is a derogatory term used by the French for the Brits.



Yet again we have relied on the America’s Test Kitchen Family of recipes.  The recipe is reprinted here.

It’s rare for us  to cook beef, much less such a massive quantity of it.  This is a 4.5 lb. sirloin tip roast, which was on sale, luckily.



Thar she blows, mateys.  At this point, all that’s happened is that we sprinkled the roast with salt and let it sit wrapped in plastic overnight in the fridge.  Then it got peppered. As you can see, we’ve had to bring out the behemoth dutch oven to sear this bad boy.



Browning meat on all sides is one of the most patience-taxing parts of cooking for me.  I mean… All sides?  There are like 8 sides to this thing!  And the waiting… is it browning or burning?  You can’t tell, cause you’re not supposed to look… and the the fond in the bottom of the pan… it’s supposed to get dark, but how dark is too dark?  AHHAHHAHAHHHHHH!!!! 

Well, lets just say it worked out.  The meat acquired a lovely crust, which was definitely one of the tastiest parts of it at the end. 



After the searing, it goes into the oven accompanied by two of our favorite cooking tools:  the digital thermometer probe and the adjustable, collapsible roasting rack.  With their help, the roast was upright and cooked to precisely the right temperature.



In the meantime, put on some sweet  gravy-makin’ music.   Like Barry White or something.



The mushrooms are cooked in the pan leavings… all that good stuff at the bottom of the pan comes up and colors the shrooms.  One by one, all the vegetables, wine, and stock go on in.  This made a good gravy, though I think we should have reduced it more as it was a bit thin.





A perfect medium-rare.  I felt like the Reformed Grinch as I sliced this guy.





A nice thick slice, with mashed potatoes and gravy.  Aye, it warms the soul on a Texas Winter’s eve.



And since we had 4.5 pounds of the stuff, it also made awesome, tender sandwich meat for days to come!