CoCo's Roast Beef

I have never tried to make roast beef before even though I am a big fan of beef. It just looks so difficult! But on Good Friday I was suddenly inspired. So I dug out some of my cook books and surfed the web for some recipes. Turns out that roast beef is actually quite easy to make! So if you want to have a hearty meal but hate to spend hours in the kitchen, try this out.



Ingredients:
A nice piece of beef
•You can find this at most Cold Storage supermarket. The meat is already pre-bundled up in strings so you can save on buying the string and tying yourself.
•With a roast, like a butterflied leg of lamb or filet of beef, it is important to secure it with string before cooking. This makes a compact shape that cooks more evenly.
•I bought a piece that was about 500g. This is just nice for two hungry people.

Salt and crushed black pepper

Oil

That’s all! Easy right?!

Of course, you should always have a balanced meal, so you can grab some vegetables of your choice while at the supermarket. I like potatoes, so I got some spring potatoes (aka baby potatoes) and asparagus.

Step 1:
Leave the meat in room temperature 30mins before cooking. This allows the meat to have a more even temperature, thus cooking more evenly. While your meat is resting, scrub your potatoes till its nice and clean. The skin of the potatoes is a rich source of vitamins and fiber. So I scrubbed them nice and clean because I would be roasting them whole later.

Step 2:
Pre-heat your oven at 180 degrees for 10mins. Boil you potatoes to remove any excess soil and also soften them a little.

Step 3:
Ready to cook?
Sprinkle a generous amount of salt and pepper onto the baking tray and roll your meat onto it. Drain your potatoes and put them into the tray with the meat.
Drizzle oil over your meat and potatoes
For extra flavour – add a few knobs of butter into the tray before popping the tray into the oven. Roast for about 35mins.

Step 4:
While waiting, you can fry up some vegetables. No time is wasted!

Step 5:
When the meat is done, take it out and wrap the whole meat in an aluminum foil. While roasting, it releases a lot of meat juice, so wrapping it up gives it opportunity to absorb the juices back, making it oh so juicy and tender. *drool~*

Step 6:
Once again, while waiting for your meat to relax, you can dish out your potatoes and make the gravy. By now, the roasting tray would have bits of meat, some dried up meat juice, butter, salt and pepper inside. You just have to put the tray over the stove top, add some soup stock (or water) and start scrapping away.

Hey, not only will this make great gravy, it makes the tray much easier to clean too!

To thicken the sauce, mix a little corn starch with water and add little by little till you achieve the desired thickness. Always taste your food! If it’s too bland, add some salt and pepper.

Step 7:
Remove the meat from the foil and slice it to serve. Remember to remove the strings!
The foil would have collected some yummy meat juice, so just add them into the prepared sauce for some extra flavour!

Step 8:
Serve...

***Applause***