Some Basics on Roast Beef

Roast beef is one of the big Sunday dinner dishes in both the US and England (where it's probably the best known). Now I'm not quite sure of the difference between a Yorkshire pudding and a popover (I'm not, in fact 100% sure that there is one), but I will say that I have fond memories of eating roast beef for dinner as a kid with roasted onions, baked potatoes, and crusty bread (which I didn't like until I was a teenager).

Well, we don't do so much of it in my house these days, which is a shame. It's rather nice to eat when made correctly; the problem is that there's so many ways to do it. You could have a plain ol' roast beef. You could go the extra mile with some prime rib. You could spit roast it; Brazilian churrasco is one prime example. You could slice it and stack it to make shawarma; you could marinate it for a week and make sauerbraten. But this recipe doesn't do that, and you'll like the end result anyway.

For the record, the technique here is to start with a pan-sear; surprisingly, this isn't common knowledge, but this is solely to develop flavor. You're not sealing anything in, just caramelizing the outside of the roast.

1 3-5lb (1.5-2 kg) beef roast (any cut will do; the recipe applied originally to prime rib)
1 medium-sized onion, sliced
1 carrot, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, sliced thin
1.5 c (400 mL) robust red wine (tested with a Pinot Noir)
.5 tbsp flour and .5 tbsp butter, kneaded into a beurre manie
olive oil or similar
Salt and pepper to taste

Salt the roast lightly. In a heavy skillet, add some oil and sear the outside of the roast on high heat. Remove the roast to a roasting pan and place in a preheated 250F oven.

Meanwhile, take the vegetables and dump them in the skillet, adding oil as necessary. Add a bit of salt and saute vegetables until the onions are cooked, then place vegetables in the roasting pan around the roast. Cook the roast in the oven until its internal temperature reaches around 130F (this will be quite rare), then remove from the oven and place it on the serving platter to rest.

While the roast is resting, add the wine to the vegetables in the roasting pan and deglaze over medium heat, simmering to reduce the sauce. When finished, whisk in beurre manie and separate gravy from vegetables (the veggies go on the serving dish with the roast). If the roast isn't done to the eater's preference, slice and broil before serving.

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