Years ago when I was a child, Sunday dinners meant roast beef with all the trimmings on a gloriously lazy afternoon. Once I became an adult, I never once cooked roast beef and was a little nervous about it, but being the Food Editor I thought that I would face it head on and go for it. After consulting friends, family, and my cookbook collection, the result was a delicious dinner that far surpassed my expecations! Don't worry about the alcohol in the beer if you are serving this to a family, it will burn off as it cooks. Continue the Guinness theme by making these Guinness cupcakes for dessert!
Roast Ingredients:
1 Tbsp cracked black pepper
1 Tbsp Herbes de Provence
3 lb roast
olive oil
2 onions
2 stalks of celery
2 carrots
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves
3 sprigs thyme
3 sprigs rosemary
Pre-heat oven to 475 F.
Wash and coarsely chop onions, celery, and carrots. Arrange vegetables, garlic, and herbs into the bottom of a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil.
Dry the roast with paper towel, then rub all over with olive oil. Coat with the herbes de provence, cracked black pepper, and salt. Set meat on top of the vegetables.
Set the roast into the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 400 F.
Add a small bit of water to the bottom of the pan to keep the vegetables from burning if you need to. Cook the roast about an hour, or until the internal temperature is 150 F, for medium. Remove from the oven and cover loosely with foil, letting stand for 15 minutes while you prepare the gravy.
Serves 6
Guinness Gravy Ingredients:
1 cup Guinness or dry red wine
3-4 cups beef stock
salt and pepper
1 heaping tablespoon flour
drippings and vegetables from making roast
Once you’ve taken your roast from the oven, transferred it to a cutting board and tented it, spoon out all the grease from the bottom of the pan that the roast cooked in. Once you have done that, get a potato masher and mash up all the vegetables and herbs left in the pan. Sprinkle the flour over top and mix well, with the pan on medium low heat. Add the beer or wine, stirring. Don’t worry about the alcohol, it will burn off. Stir in the beef broth and continue to cook and stir while it bubbles and thickens, for about 10 minutes. Strain the gravy through a fine sieve, pushing down on all the vegetables to get the flavor through. Discard vegetables. Put the strained gravy back into the pot, taste and correct for seasonings. If it’s not thick enough for your liking at this point, you can thicken it up by mixing about a tablespoon of cornstarch in cold broth and stirring it in, heating until it thickens up a little more.
Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
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