Man, you can tell that its the holiday season when I’m filling up the space with tons of recipes! This one is from a week before the holidays when we realized that we were truly running out of stuff in the freezer and had to desperately go do some major grocery shopping even if meats were expensive… Still, here we are with my first attempt at roast beef! 🙂
I got the recipe and adapted it a little to what I had available from the Made in Quebec cookbook.
Roast Beef
Serves 8
Ingredients
1 standing rib roast, 4 to 4 1/2 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 tsp spices of your choice (commercial spice mixture or about 1 tsp each of red pepper flakes, dry mustard, dried thyme and rosemary)
6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1 strig fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves)
1. Remove roast from the refrigerator 2 hours before starting to roast. When ready to cook, preheat oven to 250F. Sprinkle meat all over with salt, pepper, and spices. Insert meat thermometer in thickest part of roast, avoiding the bone.
2. Place a rack just a little longer than the meat in a roasting pan and add oil to the pan. Place roast on the rack. Roast for 2 hours, then scatter onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and bay leaves around the meat.
3. Stir thyme into pan juices. Continue roasting for another 2 to 4 hours, depending on the size and thickness of the roast. When the meat thermometer registers 120F, the meat will be rare. Remove from the oven or continue roasting until the meat thermometer registers 125F for medium-rare, 130F for medium, or 140F for well done.
4. To brown the roast, increase oven temperature to 500F and continue roasting until richly browned, from 5 to 15 minutes.
5. Remove meat from the oven, cover with aluminum foil, and let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before carving.
Note:
- I honestly don’t remember what was the cut of the roast but it was definitely not 4 pounds. It probably was less.
- I used their recommended spices but without the dry mustard
- When I did this recipe, I was incredibly low on veggies so I ended up making 4 carrots in the place of the celery.
- This recipe is paired with a gravy made with the pan juices. If you would like to know it, just email me
The experience of making roast beef the first time is definitely memorable. It took a lot of time. Its been a long time since I had taken so much patience and care on cooking. While I felt a little like a headless chicken around the kitchen and somewhat unsure about how it would turn out, but it did work out alright.
The meat was rather tender. The outside was a little drier because the inside wasn’t cooked enough so I popped it back in for a little bit. I should have added some wine or water or sauce to evaporate to help. However, it was well worth the effort.
Have you made roast beef before? What suggestions do you have? What spices do you use?
Tranquil Dreams 