Roast beef for beginners?

[doveinitial]

I’d love to do roast beef and do it well. Can you help? What do I buy? I can do chicken, turkey, gammon and lamb no problem. Beef comes out dry, tough and chewy.

You have to hold your nerve with beef and cook it slowly and let it rest as much as you can.
I either buy topside and then use the roast calculator on BBC good food, or do a casserole and slow cook for hours.

A foolproof method is to do brisket. Cook very long and slow and it will melt.

Depends how you like it.
long slow won’t be good if you like it rare.

I do very small joints (usually cut up from a bigger one I buy) top side or silverside.

it’s all about the timings depending on how you like it cooked. Roast potatoes roasted in with the meat have a wonderful flavour.

Topside, small joint with a good amount of fat. Cook rare.

I found this calculator a few years ago. Beef always turns out good, I also bought a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature.

http://www.stourhead.com/shop/roasting.html

Buy a slow cooker. Make up a big jug of gravy with granules, really thick with extra granules. Submerge the beef in gravy and cook on low for 8 hours. Meat melts in the mouth and all the juices run out to make amazing gravy too. It’s more like pulled beef though, it’s so well cooked you won’t be able to slice it.

Start with learning to cook one steak. Briefly, removing it to rest for 10 minutes covered in foil, then slice across it into strips. Do you prefer the pink middle parts, or the browner crusted sections?

This tells you what you like before parting considerable cash these days for a joint. You could then buy a small piece of fillet for a very quick roast, to be sliced thinly, or something that requires a longer more gentle cook like brisket, that you can fork apart.

Have a chat with a good butcher as well, they'll tell you how to achieve what you want, because you don't always need a huge joint for a perfect beef dinner with trimmings.

The problem is that supermarkets sell "beef roasting joints" that are not proper cuts of meat and could be anything. Topside or silverside are good joints for roasting. To roast successfully a cheaper cut needs fat and bigger is better. And it's expensive. I like brisket for slow cooking/pot roasting. If you can afford it, for roasting rib of beef on the bone is gorgeous and doesn't take long to cook.

@doveinitial Lots of the cooking methods posted are not roast beef ! They are casseroles and slow cook recipes. Not remotely roast beef.

So, as someone who has been cooking it for decades: you need either a topside joint, which will be rolled, or a rib, which will cost a fortune. Rib has more flavour.

So let’s say you want topside for a slightly cheaper roast. You then need to decide well done, medium or rare. Well done is an issue as it’s more prone to being dry and unpalatable. I prefer medium so you weigh the joint and cook for 15 minutes per lb and 15 minutes extra. So a 3lb joint is cooked for 1 hour. Allow to rest for 10 minutes. Check how red or pink the juices are. Stick a sharp knife in it. Red (blood) - it’s rare. Pink it’s medium. Not much juice - overcooked. Cook at around 170 C. Fan oven. I have an auto roasting programme and it sears first and then roasts at 170 C. Depending on your oven, try a bit hotter but don’t over cook. Dont buy a tiny joint either - far more likely to dry out. Season with salt and pepper and drop a desert-spoon of goose fat on top. Use the juices for the gravy. It will be perfect if you adjust time cooked to size of joint and how you want it to be.

Trick is to heat the oven really hot, 250 degrees c and put the oil in the pan and heat the pan too, take the hot pan out, roll the beef in the oil, season, and put into the hot oven then reduce the temperature immediately to 180, cook for 15 minutes per pound, no more

Go to a decent butcher and ask for a topside corner cut. Biggest you can afford.

Put in a metal roaster that has a lid. Smear with a bit of lard, plus black pepper, mustard powder and a crumbled beef oxo.

Lid on, roast at 220 for 20 mins then 15 mins per pound at 170. Use a meat thermometer and pull out once the middle is 45-50 degrees. Rest for as long as its cooked for, lid on, covered with a towel.

Carve thinly with a very sharp carving knife.

Another put it in a slow cooker, cover with water, an add about 7 oxo cubes and finely chopped onion and cook for several hours. Thicken with gravy granules or corn flour at the end.
Comes out melt in the mouth gorgeous. You can put potatoes in too and either eat them like that cooked in the gravy or take them out and roast them at the end to make crispy.

I've been making roast beef dinners for years too and I agree with this. I tend to cook topside. I start it off in a hot oven (say 220 degrees) to get some browning.

Delia Smith has lots of top tips.

I'm going to differ from some by saying I would never bother roasting anything less than 2kg. You need a reasonably big piece of meat to get enough gravy and you need it to render enough fat to emulsify the gravy (if that's what you want to do). I'm in 🇳🇿 not the UK but as long as you can get two meals from the leftovers it's not massively extravagant.

Brisket is a pot roasting cut and while it's very nice I wouldn't have regarded it as trad for roast beef and Yorkshire etc.

Go to the pub. Order the beef. Enjoy!

I always do my roast beef in the slow cooker. Seal it in a pan, put it in in a slow cooker, cover with stock and leave it for 6 hours, perfection.

My top tip is to tightly cover it with foil from the start. Always comes out so much more moist than when dh does it.

Edit to say add flavours first even if just salt, pepper, oil. Then baste every twenty to thirty minutes.

Read the label if you want to know the recommended cooking time and temperature.

Easy.

Topside joint and cook for about 45 mins on 180c. The beef will be rare. I generally buy a large joint and cut either into two or three pieces and freeze.

Put it in a slow cooker for an entire day with stock. It come out so succulent and tender. Or cheat and buy a ready to roast joint, used to get these all the time from M&S.

I generally buy topside but agree it needs to be a decent size piece. I roast at 160 deg c and do 12 minutes per 500 g. This is for rare. I also use a meat thermometer and take it out at around 40-45 deg c and leave it to rest. I do like it rare though. You can reheat it the next day by slicing thinly and out on a baking tray with foil tight on top. In oven at 200 deg for 5 minutes. Enough to heat it through without further cooking. I do a rib occasionally as the flavour is a lot better but tends to be more fatty (as well as a lot more expensive)

A slow cooker is not roasting. How can it be? @Catullus5 I agree about brisket. It’s a slow cook pot roast. I’m amazed people don’t know what roasting is and what to cook in terms of joint. Yes, bigger is better as it’s far less likely to dry out, and quality matters. If you have never had a roast rib of beef, you do not had the best though. Bone in and it’s so beefy.

Thank you all. I will read through all your comments and try this weekend. Thanks again.

I always sear mine in a frying pan on all sides then roast in the oven on a bed of chunky onions and carrots. I use an online calculator for medium rare beef and take it out at the calculated time. Then wrap in foil and rest for longer than recommended! (Depends on size of joint but usually about half an hour)

I don’t eat meat, but I always end up doing Christmas Dinner, and the family always want beef.

I buy the meat from a farm shop, then follow Delia to the letter. Apparently it’s excellent. I think the quality of the meat probably counts for a lot.

The quality and cut of the meat is everything, it's not necessarily you!
Silverside isn't a decent roasting joint, it's best slow cooked. Topside can be ok but leans dry.

Donald Russell sells some good beef joints, especially the sirloin roast and rib roast & has decent instructions on their website too. They are ££ though.

That’s slow cooking not roasting! It’s a totally different thing.

i oil the joint, season and roast on a veg trivet for gravy. 15 mins hot oven then turn down and cook to medium rare. Rest gor as long as you’ve cooked it for.

ETA- sorry clearly copied wrong post!