Make Your Own Deli-Style Roast Beef

March 9th, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments
Share

Forget the deli. Make your own roast beef at home. It’s simple and typically way more economical than hitting the deli counter every week—plus, you can personalize your roast beast with whatever flavors you like. All you need is a piece of meat, a few spices, and a really sharp knife.

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef: Stretch your grocery dollars

These days, I don’t know anyone who isn’t pinching at least a few pennies. This is a great way to save on your deli bill—and your lunch tab—without spending a ton of extra time in the kitchen. Once you season the meat, your oven does all the work.

For a price comparison, my eye round roast was $3.69/lb. When I checked the deli case at my local grocery store last night, they were selling their store-brand roast beef for $9.49/lb. Not a bad savings, eh? (That said, these are Boston prices. I’d love to know if the story is different in your neck of the woods.)

Make this with an eye round roast. You might also find this cut labeled “round eye roast” or “round eye pot roast.” You can substitute bottom round and top round as well. You’ll just need to mess around with the timing a little.

Now, the eye round is a relatively tough piece of meat. Not a problem. You can fix that quickly by slicing it paper thin (or as thin as you can get it), against the grain.

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef: How to slice a roast against the grain

Wait, against the grain? Mouse, what do you mean? Here you go:

The thinner you slice your meat, the more tender it will be.

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef: A note on method and timing

I follow Chris Schlesinger & John Willoughby’s roast beef technique from their fabulous book, How to Cook Meat.

Get your copy for $17.96 at Amazon—that’s more than 25% off the $24.95 list price.
(Pricing is accurate as of this posting and is subject to change.)

These guys have a great theory about cooking meat: Cooking time depends more on meat shape than it does on weight.

Which makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, you could have a roast and a steak that are exactly the same weight, but their cooking times will vary greatly based on their different shapes. The roast will take longer because it’s rounder and thicker. The steak’s weight is distributed across a flatter, thinner shape, so it’ll cook faster.

They explain that since eye round roasts are always about the same shape (that of a small-ish football), they always cook them for about 50 minutes, regardless of weight. I’ve used this method for years, and I couldn’t agree more.

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef: Customize your roast beef

My recipe makes a simple, fairly traditional roast beef. Because it’s blasted at 500 degrees for 20 minutes, I use ground spices. I’m fairly sure that fresh garlic, etc., would burn in that time. For the same reason, I don’t use anything with sugar in it.

Customize your roast with different spices. Here are a few ideas:

+Five spice powder + ground garlic + ground ginger
+Cayenne + celery salt + powdered rosemary
+Cumin + chili flakes + ground garlic

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef: How do I know when it’s done?

One thing to note. The eye round is a pretty lean cut of meat, so the longer you cook it, the drier it can become. Just a good thing to know. It will be at its juiciest at rare or medium rare. This is one of the rare cases where I actually do use a meat thermometer.

120 F = rare
126 F = medium-rare
134 F = medium
150 F = medium-well
160 F = well done

My roast came out medium-rare. I yanked it out of the oven after 50 minutes, when it was about 126 degrees.

Deli-Style Homemade Roast Beef

1 beef eye round roast
olive oil
freshly cracked black pepper
kosher salt
garlic powder
onion powder

Season the meat

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Line a sheet pan or roasting pan with foil. Put a roasting rack in the pan on top of the foil. Set aside.

Grab your roast out of the fridge. Give it a quick rinse under cold water. Pat it completely dry.

Drizzle the meat with a little olive oil. This is imprecise. Use enough oil to coat your roast completely.

With your hands, rub the meat on all sides to coat with oil. Sprinkle evenly with freshly cracked black pepper.

I like my roast beef peppery, so I used a lot. But like I said, the seasoning is totally up to you.

Be sure to get underneath and on the ends, too.

Sprinkle all sides with kosher salt, to taste.

If you’re concerned about sodium in deli meats, this is a great way to control your intake. We tend to like a fair amount of salt on our roast beef, so I was generous.

Dust all sides with garlic powder and onion powder.

When your roast is completely seasoned, pat it down with your hands to help the spices adhere.

My seasoned roast looked like this:

Roast & tent your beast!

When your roast is seasoned, place it on the rack in your prepared pan.

Pop the pan into your preheated 500 degree oven.

Roast at 500 degrees for 20 minutes. Then drop temperature to 300 degrees for another 30 minutes.

For a medium rare roast, your meat should be in the oven for a total of 50 minutes cooking time. If you’d like it rare, pull it out sooner. If you’d like it more well done, leave it in a little longer.

Here’s that temperature chart again:

120 F = rare
126 F = medium-rare
134 F = medium
150 F = medium-well
160 F = well done

After 50 minutes in the oven, my roast registered about 126 degrees or so. (To check the temperature, stick a meat thermometer into the center of your roast.)

When it comes out of the oven, it should have a nice brown crust.

Loosely tent a piece of foil over the meat for about 20 minutes when it comes out of the oven.

After it’s rested for 20 minutes, it’s ready to slice!

Slice it across the grain:

Slice it as thinly as you can with a very sharp knife.

The inside should be a lovely, rosy pink.

Wrap your roast beef tightly and keep it in the fridge. Use it within maybe 4 days or so.

Related posts:

  1. Garlic-Studded Sirloin Roast with Chili Pepper Crust Since prepping for Bon Appetit, I've been positively swimming in...
  2. Sunday Pot Roast (a.k.a. Beast in a Pot) Pot roast is stick-to-your-ribs, winter home cooking at its coziest....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Categories: Basics, Beef, Budget Meals, Entrees, Ingredient primers Tags: , ,

Leave a Reply

Trackbacks

Leave a Trackback