How to cook Roast Beef
For many, roast beef is the Sunday dish. For some – especially those of Anglo-Saxon culture – it is much more so than meat sauce or baked pasta. But preparing it well is a difficult task: it is not easy to keep it soft inside, without it burning or, worse still, drying it. Here are some tips on how to cook roast beef to perfection.
Roast beef: history and curiosities
The roast beef is a dish of roasted beef roasted in the oven. It is served as a main meal and traditionally leftovers are served in sandwiches. In England, Canada, Ireland and Australia, roast beef is also known as Sunday roast because it is the typical dish for Sunday dinner.
Roast beef: which meat to choose
The roast beef is classically obtained from the first ribs of the loin (first rib roast beef), but may also be suitable for a fillet, rump or walnut. These cuts are already sufficiently tender, which need to be cooked briefly over high heat. For other cuts, such as the codone or the middle slice, a slower and more gradual cooking will be necessary. If you choose a slice, you can try a stuffed roast beef. In this case you will go to roll the meat around a mixture of vegetables or other ingredients of your choice.
How to prepare roast beef
Once you have chosen the right piece of meat, roast beef must be put into shape. Useful for this purpose is the refe, food string with which to tie the piece of meat from one end, forming a noose. After that, by making several rounds of refe and another noose, you will have created a kind of net in which to bag your roast beef. Now you can garnish it with aromas: sage and rosemary are perfect for this purpose.
For a delicious and fragrant light roast beef, perfect for summer evenings when you don’t want to give up meat, you can prepare a roast beef in an herb crust. Here the filling of aromas is multiplied: in addition to sage and rosemary, you will need mint and bay leaves. But this fragrant mix should be placed on the roast beef only after cooking, making it roll on a lollipop with herbs until it is completely covered. For the more adventurous, you can also try the spicy version.
Roast beef: how much to cook
The roast beef is traditionally served rare or pink: the center of the piece of meat is warm but not cooked, so it retains the characteristic red-pink color. Cooking times are calculated per kilo. Roast beef is rare if cooked for 30 minutes, medium rare for 40 minutes, medium for 50 minutes and well done for 60 minutes. For a perfect English roast beef, once cooked, let it rest in the oven off for 10 minutes, so that the fibres absorb their juices and are softer.
Roast beef: how to cook it
The classic method of cooking roast beef is naturally baked. But it is not the only one. You can cook roast beef in the microwave, a technique that allows you to have a lighter result than the traditional one. For 1 kg of meat the cooking time will be 14-16 minutes per 500 watts of power. The roast beef must be prepared with coarse salt, then put into an oven dish and pass it in the microwave. After half the cooking time, turn it over and cook the roast beef for the remaining time. After 16 minutes, let the roast beef rest in the microwave for 15 minutes.
When you read “grilled roast beef”, of course you should not expect the roll or piece of meat to be cooked entirely on this tool. In most cases it is a traditionally cooked slice of roast beef, grilled and served – as tradition dictates – in a sandwich. To cook a light roast beef and make it tastier, you can also bard it with slices of lard or tight bacon that you will fix to the meat with a series of rounds of cooking tape and remove just before the end of cooking so that the meat can brown well.
Roast beef: how to serve it
To serve a perfect English roast beef, mix the juice of 2 lemons, a tablespoon of mustard and one of Worcester sauce, with a few drops of tabasco. In the French version, the roast beef is served with a sauce obtained from the fusion of roquefort cheese, liquid cream and brandy. The mixture is brushed on slices of roast beef, then wrapped in a cone. Once the roast beef is cooked, it can be served cut into slices in a Mediterranean style. Just sprinkle the meat with lemon juice, sprinkle with ripe tomatoes, black and green olives, as well as celery and Tropea onion. A traditional side dish of roast beef is Yorkshire pudding. It is also often served with horseradish or horseradish sauce.
The roast beef sandwich
The roast beef is also eaten in the form of a sandwich, the perfect method for children to eat it too. Usually the meat is used as a filling when only the leftovers of the original dish remain. The roast beef sandwich commonly includes bread, cold roast beef, lettuce and mustard, although it is not uncommon to find horseradish, fresh or powdered, chilli and, in some cases, even red onion. The roast beef sandwich is generally considered as the second most popular beef sandwich in Britain, second only to the canned meat sandwich, and can be eaten hot or cold at your choice.
Some traces trace the origins of the current roast beef sandwich back to 1877, from the then little-known recipe “Beefsteak Toast”: a cold roast, bread and sauce. In 1900, the dish was criticized by The Washington Post, who described it as “unattractive” and “a tired ark in a flood of sauce”. The dish gained popularity in the years to come and, from 1931, some critics went so far as to describe it as “a true taste of South Dakota”. The roast beef sandwich is a traditional sandwich from the west of the state of New York, much loved in cities like Buffalo and Niagara Falls. In Tuscany it is proposed again in the version with the schiacciata.
The red meat calls the red wine. The tannins will give your palate an acidic aftertaste that will perfectly match the flavor of the meat. It is good to combine this dish with fruity wines, such as Chianti Classico, Cabernet or Dolcetto d’Alba. The red Cirò, the Marzemino, rich in sapid and slightly bitter taste, or the Gattinara del Piemonte are very sweet.
