Roast Rib of Beef

Like most people, tomorrow we go back to work (I actually start a new job) after the Christmas and New Year Holiday. As a final fling before the inevitable new-year guilt kicks in, we chose a rib of beef for lunch today, served with roast potatoes, roast parsnips, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables.

We followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s method for cooking the beef: cook on high (230C) for 20 minutes before reducing the heat to 160C and cooking for a further 22 minutes* then resting for 30 minutes. This produced a slightly less rare meat than we were hoping for but the intense flavour of the well-hung meat came through regardless. It smelt faintly cheesy to me and reminded me of the difference in flavour between mutton and lamb.

The potatoes suffered a little from all the temperature changes but they were still pretty good. The Yorkshire pudding was the best we’ve achieved in the new oven, a perfect balance between doughy insides and crispy edges.

The vegetables looked pretty.

* These vary depending on the weight of the joint obviously, but the main idea was to give it an initial “sizzle” at high temperature before turning it down. For smallish (under 2kg) joints, it’s 20 minutes at 210C to 230C and then 10 minutes per 500g at 160C. He also suggests using a meat thermometer to keep exact track of it if you want to, and getting the temperature to 50C for rare beef. Ours went a bit over that due to inattention, probably 55C, which is likely why it wasn’t quite rare. It’s still less than the 60C that our meat thermometer suggests for rare beef though – Hugh says that the long resting time keeps it heating through for a while longer.