Roast beef
My new guru, Cook's Illustrated, had wisdom concerning roasts. I've always been terrible at roasts, so I was intrigued.
The whole point of a roast is that does magic with cheaptastic cuts, so I grabbed an eye round roast from McKinnon's at $2.50/lb. Salted it heavily and mummified it in plastic in the fridge for a day to start. Then oiled, peppered, and seared the outside. Transferred to a 225-degree oven for an hour and a half until the temp reached 120, then turned off the oven but left it closed for another 40 minutes until the temp reached a nice medium-rare 130. Let it sit half an hour until dinner.
(CI argues in essence that what you would like is to cook at the roast's destination temperature for about a day until it comes up to temp. This recipe is their attempt to approximate that for those of us whose ovens don't go down to 130 and who don't want to leave the gas on for twelve hours. Hence finishing in a cooling oven. dolohov might like this notion.)
Served with a horseradish cream sauce (whip cream to soft peaks, fold in equal quantity of horseradish, salt and pepper to taste), plus a salad of mixed bitter greens.
Overall Rating: Excellent. Perfectly uniform pink medium rare, nice salty-beefy yumminess.
Lessons Learned:
+ Total drippings were less than two teaspoons -- the long salting really locks in those juices.
+ My oven is not as heat-tight as CI's. Not really surprising when you think about it.
+ Whipping cream by hand is much easier if you have angry shouty music turned up too loud on your iPod while you do it. Thanks, Corporate Avenger!
+ Verity loves horseradish cream sauce. Buh-wha??
+ With good time-management, this would actually be a very easy recipe. Good weekend food.
Fun Facts: I'm pretty sure that McKinnon's store scale is off. There's no way that roast was only 3 lbs -- I'd say it was closer to 4.5.
The whole point of a roast is that does magic with cheaptastic cuts, so I grabbed an eye round roast from McKinnon's at $2.50/lb. Salted it heavily and mummified it in plastic in the fridge for a day to start. Then oiled, peppered, and seared the outside. Transferred to a 225-degree oven for an hour and a half until the temp reached 120, then turned off the oven but left it closed for another 40 minutes until the temp reached a nice medium-rare 130. Let it sit half an hour until dinner.
(CI argues in essence that what you would like is to cook at the roast's destination temperature for about a day until it comes up to temp. This recipe is their attempt to approximate that for those of us whose ovens don't go down to 130 and who don't want to leave the gas on for twelve hours. Hence finishing in a cooling oven. dolohov might like this notion.)
Served with a horseradish cream sauce (whip cream to soft peaks, fold in equal quantity of horseradish, salt and pepper to taste), plus a salad of mixed bitter greens.
Overall Rating: Excellent. Perfectly uniform pink medium rare, nice salty-beefy yumminess.
Lessons Learned:
+ Total drippings were less than two teaspoons -- the long salting really locks in those juices.
+ My oven is not as heat-tight as CI's. Not really surprising when you think about it.
+ Whipping cream by hand is much easier if you have angry shouty music turned up too loud on your iPod while you do it. Thanks, Corporate Avenger!
+ Verity loves horseradish cream sauce. Buh-wha??
+ With good time-management, this would actually be a very easy recipe. Good weekend food.
Fun Facts: I'm pretty sure that McKinnon's store scale is off. There's no way that roast was only 3 lbs -- I'd say it was closer to 4.5.