Beef
The roast beef of Old England
When I was little, most Sundays we had roast beef with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, peas and
carrots. Familiarity led to contempt, but years later I returned to this classic and we now enjoy it at
least once a month. Getting the timing right is the thing. Topside or rib are the best beef joints to
roast, and they shouldn’t be too lean as some fat improves the flavour. Lewry’s in Botley high street
does properly butchered and hung Aberdeen Angus beef, we have never had any that was less than
excellent. A 2kg joint will set you back £20 or so, but for a great meal plus sandwiches and a stir fry
later, it’s a bargain.
Season the joint with salt and pepper, rub in some crushed garlic if you like (we do). Place in a
roasting tin in the middle of a medium oven, add a glass of white wine (optional). Allow an hour per kilo
plus 40 minutes, probably 2 ½-3 hours for an average joint, less for a small one. Roast potatoes are
essential, goose or duck fat is best for them but beef dripping from this joint is good too. If you roast
the potatoes in the same pan with the beef you’ll have very good potatoes but no meat juices for the
gravy as the spuds soak them up. Remove the meat from the oven when done and pour off the pan
juices into a 500ml Pyrex® jug, the beef fat which rises to the top is needed for Yorkshire puddings.
Skim it off with a micro ladle made from a cheap soup spoon with the handle bent at right angles for
this purpose, illustrated below.
Yorkshire pudding(s) Make batter with 150g white flour, an egg, a pinch of salt and 200ml milk. Beat
well with a fork to get rid of lumps; the mix should be just runny enough to pour easily. You can get
metal ‘bun trays’ with 12 or so individual dishes, good for lots of small Yorkshires, or use a larger tin
for a big pudding which you then cut up. Put a little beef dripping in each dish and warm the tray in the
oven for 3 minutes, then add the batter and replace in the top of the oven (where it’s hottest). It will
rise to 3 times its original volume, bear this in mind as you pour (a 500ml Pyrex® jug is ideal for
pouring batter). It will take about 20 minutes to cook, better a bit underdone than burned. Don’t open
the oven for the first 10 minutes or your Yorkshires may collapse. Try to time for them to be ready to
serve from the oven, they may go flat if left waiting.
Fresh or frozen peas, green beans and carrots are ideal. Cook these in very little water, barely
enough to cover them and lightly salted. This not only saves energy, but the used vegetable water
with its flavours can then be added to enrich the gravy, this obviously won’t work if you use too much
cooking water.
Gravy Make the gravy when the Yorkshires go in the oven. Chop a shallot or small onion very fine, fry
in some of the skimmed beef fat, add the meat juices and a glass of wine, plus a bit of vegetable water
and a teaspoon of cornflour (stirred into water first) to thicken. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Taste (skim off a touch in a big spoon to cool it first) and adjust for flavour. Worcestershire or soy
sauce adds colour and savouriness if these are lacking, gravy powder or stock cubes can be used. If
the gravy is too salty, something sweet like redcurrant jelly or honey, even sugar, helps restore
balance.
The above is a general purpose gravy recipe which can be adapted to all sorts of meat gravy (or
sauce), so I won’t repeat it in detail elsewhere in the book.
Slice the beef across the grain as thin as you can with a long sharp knife, if the laws of England still
allow you to own one. I like to do this at the table if there’s room. If you have got the timing right and
put this clichéd but excellent dish of ‘rosbif’ (French slang word for Englishman) on the table in good
shape and no more than half an hour late, you deserve a glass or 2 of a good Rioja or Shiraz to go
with it. Don’t forget the mustard and horseradish.
Approximate timings for roast Sunday dinner (assuming a 2kg joint, less time for a smaller one)
11.00 put beef joint in oven, get frozen peas out to thaw
12.30 start potatoes, turn beef, open red wine to breathe
12.50 baste roast potatoes, check beef, make Yorkshire batter, put plates over oven to
warm, prepare carrots
13.20 baste potatoes again, drain roasting pan juices, skim off fat, boil carrots
13.30 remove beef from oven, put Yorkshires in, make gravy, issue 10 minute warning, ask
someone to lay table
14.00 serve up
Braised beef with ginger and oyster sauce
2kg brisket or other beef stewing joint
12 shallots or small onions (halved or whole, depending on size)
5cm lump of ginger, peeled and sliced
200g mushrooms, sliced or whole, depending on size
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
30mls oyster sauce
3 tsps toasted sesame oil
Salt and pepper
5 cloves
2 bay leaves, sprig of fresh sage
500ml water, white wine or cider
Put the lot in a casserole in the oven at mark 4 for 3 hours. That’s all there is to it! Ideal prepared
Saturday evening to be reheated for Sunday lunch after church or a walk, in which case just turn the
oven off after 2 hours and leave the dish there to cool slowly overnight. Another advantage of doing it
this way is that any fat will melt out and solidify on top of the dish and can be removed. Brisket is the
ideal joint for slow braising, but I have used supermarket topside that was too lean and dry for
satisfactory roasting.
Remove the meat and slice about 5-6mm thick, serve with carrots, boiled or mashed
potatoes/Swedes/parsnips, cabbage, sweetcorn or just bread, and pour over ladles of the stock.
Serves 4-6 persons depending on how much meat they like and the amount of vegetables. Variations
carrots or parsnips are good. A cinnamon stick and 6 cloves, or 2 teaspoons of Madras curry paste
would add spice and/or heat if you like. Some writers suggest adding anchovies to slow cooked beef
or lamb dishes, I haven’t tried it yet. You could substitute chicken, pork or lamb for beef for a different
but equally good outcome. Shorten the cooking time for chicken.
Beef Burgers
Well made burgers are not junk food. Anyone who turns their nose up at good burger, chips and
beans risks a charge of food snobbery. 500g of mince makes 8 burgers.
500g lean beef mince
1 medium onion minced fine
2 tsps of ground cumin
Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 free range egg
Mix in a big polythene bowl by wooden spoon or by hand. Divide the mix by rolling into a sausage
shape on a polythene board and halving it until you have 8 equal portions. Roll into balls and mould to
shape by hand.
Grill or fry the burgers. Frying is easier, and you can fry onions in the same pan. Grilling is less
calories but home made burgers may crumble when you turn them on the grill, less of a problem in a
frying pan. A compromise is to seal the burgers by frying one minute a side before transferring to the
grill, a handy trick if you are setting up a production line to feed a lot of people as fast as you can, if
your children have friends round, for example. Make sure the burger is cooked all through without a
trace of pink.
Serve burger with chips and beans or salad or green vegetables of your choice, or in a bun, with or
without cheese slice and fried onions. Go to Goodies bar-B-Q bar® opposite the Mayflower theatre in
Southampton and try their classic American burgers for inspiration. Mango chutney or sweet Thai chilli
dipping sauce make a delicious change from the usual mustard and ketchup.
Variations. You can omit the egg, although the burger may not hold together so well, or omit the
onions (I wouldn’t). Other spices and herbs such as coriander, garlic, sage, ginger, curry powder or
paste, garlic, Tabasco®, soy or Worcestershire sauce can be added. Minced meat based dishes like
this allow an imaginative man to express himself and invent his own ‘specials’.
PS an alternative with your seasoned mince beef mix is roll it into egg sized balls, roll in garam
massala or whole spice mix of your choice and stir fry, or bake in a tin on the oven, to make savoury
meat balls.
Chilli con carne
A popular classic which makes a virtue of stretching beef mince with red kidney beans, a cheap and
healthy option. Beans are not used in the original Texas version but have become traditional and work
very well. To serve 4.
500g minced beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 can chopped tomatoes
100g (half a tube) tomato purée
1 or 2 small red chillies, finely chopped (include seeds)
1 tsp each of cumin, coriander and paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g tin of red kidney beans
3 mild red peppers
If you don’t use a can of beans, soak 250g of dry beans overnight then simmer for an hour. Fry the
beef mince and spices with the onions and garlic in a little oil, add the finely chopped red peppers and
as these are cooked, add the beans and tomato and stir. If it’s not hot enough add some Tabasco®
at the table, if its too hot add some plain yoghourt or sour cream as with hot curry, you might like to do
this anyway. Serve with nachos or bread. Options add a glass of red wine at the beef frying stage,
some chunks of lean beef or pork to the mince, bay leaves or other herbs, use alternative beans e.g.
haricots, butterbeans etc. You could omit the beef and add more beans and tomato for a vegetarian
version, but Davy Crocket, Jim Bowie and John Wayne would surely turn in their graves!
Beef steak
The classic way is fried with chips and ‘all the trimmings’. Fillet steak is best, and most expensive,
sirloin and T bone are good, rump steak is OK but sometimes rather chewy. Season, fry 5 minutes a
side in 50:50 olive oil and butter, with onions (battered and deep fried onion rings are nice if you have
the energy), fried half tomatoes and whole mushrooms, serve with chips and peas. Many people think
it is best to cook the steak hot and fast so it is still red in the middle (rare), others prefer it definitely
cooked all the way through with no trace of pink. This is a matter of preference, but rare steak is
certainly not a health risk in the way than underdone burger can be, as germs cannot penetrate to the
interior of the steak as they may with minced meat. Eat with sharp knives.
Dianne sauce. Fry some onions and mushrooms in the pan the steak was cooked in (keep the steak
warm nearby) add half a glass of white wine and a dash of brandy. Reduce with the pan sauces,
return the steak to the pan and stir in a dollop of cream just before serving.
Toad in the hole
This is a sausage and batter dish but I included it in this chapter as you use the same batter as
Yorkshire pudding and some beef dripping. Beef chipolatas are in my view best for this, but you can
use pork sausages. Put 3 or 4 thin sausages (chipolatas) per person in a roasting tin with a bit of beef
dripping into a medium-hot oven, mark 5. When they are cooked, about 30 minutes, add the batter,
turn the heat up to mark 6 and cook for another 15 minutes. Serve with baked beans and cabbage.
Variation-sprinkle with paprika.
Beef Stroganoff
A classic Russian dish. Slice 100g of fillet steak per person into ribbons about 15 by 4 millimetres thick
and about 10-15 cm long, cutting across the grain as always for this sort of quick frying. Sirloin steak
can be used but fillet is best. Season with fresh ground black pepper, salt and paprika. Fry the strips
of beef in olive oil, adding in sequence some thinly sliced onions, sliced mushrooms, white wine and at
the very end, sour cream (crème fraiche). Ordinary cream will do, a dash of brandy helps too if you
have one to spare. Serve on a bed of tagliatelli pasta.
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