Published Dec 16, 2003
My favorite cooking method is probably roasting. It’s simple, it’s tasty, it’s easy, and it’s good for so many different foods. I love roasting and find it a lot of fun. So, lacking any particular inspiration for a food to cook this week, I decided to roast. I picked out a nice, inexpensive piece of beef at Whole Foods and got going.
There are a lot of fun things to do with meat you’re roasting. If it has a skin, you can slip garlic and herbs under the skin. If it has a hole in the middle, you can stuff it with apples or lemons. For beef, I often cut small slits in the outside and stuff in garlic and rosemary. But this time I decided to try a dry rub. I rubbed the meat with a mixture of crushed green peppercorns, rock salt, cumin and coriander:
I then left the meat, uncovered, in the fridge to cure for an hour. Now, I could have cured it longer, say, overnight, but I needed dinner.
Most cookbooks tell you to roast by sticking the meat in a 350°oven until it’s done. But half of the good part of a roast is the lovely caramelized crust on the outside, and 350° will never give you a crust. Alton Brown has a good suggestion in his book cook the roast at 200° until it reaches the desired internal temperature, then remove it from the oven, heat the oven to 500°, replace the roast, and scorch the roast’s outside for about 15 minutes. I’ve used this technique several times, and it really works.
After removing the roast from the oven, I let it cool on a cutting board for a half hour — anything coming out of a hot oven cooks for a while just from the heat contained within, and it’s important to let a roast finish cooking. While the roast rested, I made a simple jus from the leavings in the pan. A splash of some white wine vinegar and a couple of cups of water made for perfect deglazing; once all of the good browned juices were lifted from the roasting pan, I threw in a few icecubes of frozen turkey stock. The result was a great, light jus.
Serve with some boiled potatoes — simple American dinner!
