~ Sunday Dinner ~ Roast Beef

Can I tell you a secret?  I…  I hate roast beef.  It’s true!  I do.  And mostly that’s because I really love my beef to be medium rare.  This is hard to accomplish with a roast beef.  Well, at least in my experience.  Nana used to start her roasts like, 6 hours before dinner and they were always really well done.  In my own kitchen I have not had a lot of success in making a roast that I liked.  My family is always happy, but I am left feeling completely underwhelmed.

Until tonight.

Now, I admit that it might have something to do with the cuts of meat that I use for roast beef dinners.  I tend to favour leaner cuts of meat, and in beef this often means “tough”.  My go-to cut has been eye of the round.  This is in part because it’s leaner, but too, it’s cheap.  And the Scot in me likes a deal.  :)  I have been hunting for as long as I can remember for a recipe that delivers taste, tenderness and the perfect amount of “doneness” to satisfy my medium-rare preference.

Tonight, I found that recipe.  Well, I found a recipe and followed a lot of different advice from several different commenters.  The original recipe can be found here.  So here’s what I did:

Ingredients

1 eye of the round roast, mine was about 3lbs.
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp onion salt
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp thyme
for the gravy:
drippings from the pan
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups water
1 tsp cocoa
1 tsp ketchup

Method

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Once the oven comes to temperature, set the timer for 20 minutes.  You want to make sure the oven is good and hot before the meat goes in.
2. While the oven is heating, mix all the spices together and set them aside.
3. Put the meat into a pan that fits perfectly, and sprinkle with the spices.  Rub the spices all over the meat, and make sure that the piece of meat with the most fat on it is on the top.  This will “baste” the roast as it cooks.  Do NOT cover the roast.  Leave it uncovered.  This allows the meat to sear so your outside edges are crispy and the meat inside is really tender, considering it’s a cheap cut of meat.  :)
4. Once your 20 minutes have passed, put the roast in the oven.  Reduce the heat to 475, and then cook it for 7 mins/pound.  So my roast cooked for 21 minutes because it was about a 3lb roast.  You did not misread that — cook it at 475 for 7 mins/pound.
5. When the time is up, turn the oven off.  DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR.  At all.  Keep that sucker closed, you got me???  You are going to leave it closed for 20 mins/pound.  So my 3lb roast needed 60 mins, but I actually left is shut tight until 1 hour 20 minutes.
6. Once the time is up, bring the roast out and allow it to rest.  I covered my roast with tin foil, lifted an edge of the foil and drained the drippings into a small sauce pan to make gravy with.  Seal the foil around your roasting pan and set the roast aside to rest.
7. While the roast rests, you’re going to make a gravy.  This works best if you have a 2-cup measuring cup.  To that 2-cup measure, add your cornstarch & flour.  Next, add some warm water.  Using the back of a spoon mush the flour & cornstarch into the water.  The goal is to get all the lumps out and make a smooth paste.  Once this is accomplished, add some more water and mix again.  You’ll keep doing this until you have about 1 1/2 of the mixture in your cup.
8. Place the sauce pan with the drippings in it on your stove over medium-low heat.  Once the drippings start to boil, pour in some of the water mixture – maybe 1/2-3/4 of a cup.  Whisk it in to the drippings, not stopping because if it reaches the boil without whisking your gravy may have lumps.  At this point, I started to worry that I had too much thickening in the drippings.  So I add about 1/3 cup of straight-up water, whisking that in too.  Next, add the cocoa and the ketchup — trust me!  It gives great depth to the gravy, not just in colour but also in texture and flavour.  The cocoa makes the flavours come together and adds an interesting complexity to the flavour.  If you’re unsure though, use 1/2 tsp.  Just don’t skip it all together, ok? (Shout-out to Jill for teaching me this secret.  Love you Jill!)  Whisk it all together.  Your gravy should be boiled by now — this means it will be thicker.  If you are not happy with the thickness of the gravy, add more water to thin it out or more of the cornstarch/flour/water mix to thicken it further.

Slice your roast and serve with garlic mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and broccoli.  And the gravy, of course.  :)

Enjoy!

Broccoli Chicken Divan

I know, I know…  when I started this blog it was because I was raging against recipes that were not really recipes, but rather a bunch of prepared ingredients thrown together and called a meal.  I remember…  and yes, it still bothers me that people call that cooking.  My friend Val makes dishes like these from time to time and I love what she calls it.  She says that she “assembled” it.  HA!  Isn’t that perfect?  I love it.

Don’t get me wrong — I too love the convenience of “recipes” like that.  And yeah, I have made dinners of chicken fingers and fries (with cut up veggies so there’s at least some semblance of health to the meal).  It’s not that I don’t do that.  It is that “assembling” as Val calls is, is not a recipe.

But why this ranty-like intro?  Well, because.  Tonight I made something for dinner that involves some prepared foods and – dare I admit it – even a can.  The verdict?  Well, I’m sharing it with you so I bet you can guess…  we loved it.  It was so good!  Now, I’ll admit: this recipe below is a mish-mash of a few recipes I found.  I made this one before, and it was at best, ok.  When I stumbled upon this one, I saw some potential for improvement and so I did some tweaking.  So enough with the preamble – here’s what I did:

Ingredients

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken
6 cups broccoli florets, cut into bite sized pieces
1 can “Cream of Chicken” soup
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonaise (not salad dressing or Miracle Whip to use a brand name)
1/3 cup water
3/4 tsp lemon juice
1/2 grated cheddar (I used 2-year-old cheddar, but whatever you have is going to be perfect)
2 tbsp butter
1/4 bread crumbs

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Cook your chicken in a frying pan until it’s almost cooked through.  It should be a little pink inside still so that it does not become dry when it goes in the oven for further cooking.  Cut the partially cooked chicken into bite sized pieces and place in your baking dish.  I used my corning-ware 2.8 ltr baking dish; it’s smaller than a 9×13 pan, but bigger than a 9×9.  Whatever you have will be perfect, trust me!
3. Gently steam your broccoli for about 2 minutes.  I did this in a pot on the stove with about 2 cm’s of water on the bottom.  I added the broccoli to the pot right away, turned my element to medium-high and once the water came to a boil, I gave it about 2 minutes.  You’re looking for that bright green colour, and the vegetable should still be very firm.  Drain the water from broccoli and add it to the casserole dish you’re using.
4. Next, in a bowl combine together the can of soup, the sour cream and the mayonaise.  Add the water and lemon juice and mix again.  Pour this sauce over the chicken & broccoli and stir.  Top with the grated cheddar.
5. Melt the butter and mix it with the bread crumbs to make a nice crunchy topping.  Spoon this over the top of the casserole.
6. Put the casserole in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.  The sauce will be bubbly and thickened.

I served this with rice on the side, and it really was “Divan”.  HA!  See what I did there?!?!  All right…  I’m going away now.

Enjoy!