Here is a good roast beef recipe. If you are into slow cooking , great cause this one takes about a week.
This is the type of dish you would get in a class A beef house. The kind of place that serves dry aged beef.
Pick a decent cut of beef, one that suits the amount of people. I prefer doing this with a rib roast cut from the butcher.This cut is basically prime rib. But you could use just about any cut of beef. Talk to the butcher where you buy the beef even if it is at the grocery store. Ask them if they can give you something really fresh. Tell them you are going to dry age it.
Then get a set of about six sturdy dish towels. You don’t want them to fray and come apart. When you get home launder if they are new, Take three of the towels and lay them out on the counter. Rub the beef with some kosher salt. Place the beef on the center of the towels and wrap the beef. Put the wrapped beef into a roasting dish. This is because the meat will loose a lot of moister and you don’t want it leaking every where. Let this sit in the fridge for a day or three till the towels become soaked with blood. Take the towels off and set out the other three clean towel. wrap the beef again and, put it back in the pan into the fridge, launder the bloody towels. repeat this for a week to ten days. You will extract a lot of the moister and the meat will become more dense. The natural enzymes within the meat will also start to break it down.
When ready to prepare the roast beef. unwrap it from the towels and cut away the first 1/8" - 1/4" of the surface of the meat.
This is one of the reasons dry aged beef is so expensive. You are taking away a lot of moisture then you are also cutting some away, not to mention the price of handling the beef for the aging time. You can get aged beef at the Reading Terminal Market for about $30 per LB. :o
Anyways you will have it like above for far less.
After you have trimmed the aged beef, get a large enough lidded roaster pan for the meat and a few other ingredients. Place the meat in the center of the pan. Around it place some onion wedges, whole clipped garlic, fresh rosemary, bay leaf, red wine (preferably burgundy) salt and fresh cracked pepper. Top with a few pats of butter and cover the roaster pan with the lid, or foil… Put it into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. Let this roast till you get it just under your target temperature. (using a meat thermometer). Then uncover it for the last third of the cooking time. Baste it frequently and cook till you reach your desired internal temp. I,E. rare to well done.
You can also put potatoes and carrots or something in with the beef as well. Best to roast that stuff with the meat.
As far as gravy goes, Ill post my recipe for a burgundy beef demiglaze with green pepper corns latter, basically its a beef oxtail stock that is reduced by half, enriched with wine and thickened slightly with a roux. oh and we have to get a recipe for Yorkshire pudding going too.
Yorkshire puddings are a little tough. Somebody had a few tricks back in the old country, was it nic? I remember somebody was turning them out. Oh man are they good for sopping up the demiglaze.
