Thursday, January 7, 2016

Cheap Roast plus Fancy cooking method equals killer delicious tender meat! Who knew?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took a cheapie old hunk of roast like an eye of the round (euww) and cooked it as though it was a $150.00 prime rib??
I did so I did and I was shocked.


Eye of the round, perfectly pink, perfectly tender...every.single.time.  I promise.

TRACY'S EYE OF THE ROUND PRETENDING TO BE PRIME RIB

INGREDIENTS:

1 3lb eye of the round roast, room temperature!!!
butter, salt, pepper.

METHOD:

Bring roast to room temperature (I leave it out overnight)
Preheat oven to 500 for at least 30 minutes.
Slather, thickly, the roast with butter then seriously season it with salt and pepper.

Roast the meat for EXACTLY 5 minutes per pound.  Use a calcuator and round up!

After the time, turn the oven OFF and do not open the door, DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR, under penalty of culinary failure for at least 2 1/2 hours.

Trust me.

After 2 1/2 hours, remove meat, slice THINLY and eat, eat, eat.

PLAY BY PLAY BEAUTY SHOTS

Here is my tester hunk of cheapie eye of the round, weighed in at 2.13 (x 5 = 10.65 which rounds up to 11 minutes of cooking)

Even I can handle 11 minutes of cook time :)

I slathered with butter and seasoned well.  The pan is dry and the oven screaming hot
After the 11 mins, set timer for 2 hours 30 minutes















After the time in the oven, door closed, this emerged!  I transferred to a board and stared at it, not entirely confident... then I sliced it.  paper thin.  I sliced it and found the most perfectly tender pink interior.  I piled it high on homemade bread with fresh aioli and snarfed it.  Joyfully.  I didn't get a picture, I was so shocked and delighted :)
 
 

Yeah, I'm not lying!  can you BELIEVE IT?  I'm going to test with other cheapie cuts but if it works with this, I have total faith. 

let me know how much you love this method!! 

ENJOY

/tracy


9 comments:

  1. Tracy,my husband loves roast beef sandwiches and is always after me to find a way to make it taste as good as the deli roast beef. I found it right here! The only changes I made is to add garlic and a few other seasonings. IT is just as good as you said. OMG, this made my husband smile and say, "roast beef sandwiches for lunch tomorrow?" It was equally delicious cold, in sandwiches. Thanks for making my day with another easy recipe.

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  2. I'm DELIGHTED you tried it and enjoyed it!!!! I prefer it cold. BUT I did slice some paper thin and throw it in a frypan with well cooked up onions and peppers just to heat quickly then onto my baguette with provolone cheese... hello philly cheese steak!! try it!!

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    Replies
    1. I came back today to look it up again as I have another eye of round roast and, while it is so simple that I should NEVER have to look it up again, I wanted to be certain I had everything right. So glad I saw your reply. I will definitely make Philly cheese steak sandwiches out of the leftovers tomorrow.

      Thanks for your delightful recipes. I have not done every one of them yet but they are so easy and delicious that I plan to do just that.

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  3. Hi, Tracy, I am in Chuckey, TN visiting a friend. I wanted to show her your website since she doesn't have a computer and no Internet, obviously, so I am cooking the prime rib right now and will get a cheap cut of roast So we can do the roast beef sandwich recipe. Thanks for making cooking fun for me as well as my friends😍

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  4. Tracy, a new twist on your cheap roast idea: I added some smoked paprika to the butter today and it really upped the flavor to amazing. I also decided to find out if piercing the meat before I roasted it would change anything. I pierced it all over before putting anything on it. then mixed my seasonings into the butter. WOW, this definitely added more pizazz to an already fabulous recipe. Not that I think yours needs tweaking but I make this so frequently (hubby loves RB sandwiches for lunch so it is always in the fridge or freezer) that I like to change things up a bit now and then.

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  5. Last evening some friends stopped by. It was unexpected and it was at a time when no one should be hungry. Needless to say, since my roast beef had just come out of the oven, EVERYONE suddenly became hungry and it was gone in an instant. Naturally, everyone had to have a copy of your recipe and, as always, I wrote your web address on each copy so they could see for themselves how good it is and thank you for your genius. Thank goodness I had to go to the store today and was able to purchase TWO pieces of Eye of Round and make another go at it so Santa and my brother can have sandwiches for lunch this week. I am figuring it should be 5 minutes per pound FOR THE LARGEST PIECE, would you agree? The two pieces weigh a total of 7.24 pounds and are about equal in size. I am as sure as I can be that 5 minutes X 7.24 would make it way overcooked but 5 minutes x 3.8 pounds would be about right.

    Oh, BTW,piercing the meat was fine for fresh but once frozen and thawed, it was a tad drier than I like so I will not pierce when I am freezing. Just doing your precise recipe with salt and cracked black pepper today. Oven preheating, butter softening and ready to go....cant wait for it to be done!

    One last thing, my husband is a taxi driver and at least 3 times a week he will give your website to people to try your "Cheap Roast Fancy Cooking" recipe. He has it written down on a card and business travelers will take the card and write down your info so they can try it themselves. HE raves about it and you would be amazed how many people have no idea that roast beef can be as good as the $12 a pound deli sliced and much healthier with your own hands seasoning it!

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  6. no piercing! :)
    oh man that's awesome to hand out the card, we'll have everyone cooking it at this rate!HAHA love it!!!
    I would do the 5 per lb for the smallest piece, better to undercook than overcook, imho :)

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  7. "Better to undercook than overcook, imho" SO true, Tracy. As always, it came out perfectly med rare, the way we LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I had to print a new copy for my husband as one of the cab customers appears to have absconded with his copy! So this time I made 20 copies for him to just hand out. A small price for a great recipe. Emblazoned across the top in marker is 'FROM "TracyCooksInAustin.com"...BEST WEBSITE FOR THE CULINARY PALATE'. Hope you don't mind me advertising for you but I so love your recipes.

    I am out again and have to get another roast today so I can make more. My husband never tires of this recipe, even eating it 5 days a week! All I have to do is change up the rest of the things I put on his sandwich (ie horseradish, hummus or baba ghanoush instead of mayo, add pickles, lettuce, different cheese, etc) and he is happy. My youngest brother was in town for a week and stayed with us. He had to go to work while he was here so had lunch every day. He was skeptical, even after Jeff raved about it but after the first lunch he came home and said, "wow, you and Jeff are right. That is better than deli." So I printed him a copy as well. He said he can make it after he gets home from work, leave it while he does his chores, slice it before bed and be good for a couple weeks. Especially since he got a taste of the frozen and thawed and said he could not tell the difference in the flavor. We were all amazed that it was as good thawed as it is fresh. I only freeze it for a week in a freezer bag so it doesn't ruin the flavor. I don't know about freezing longer and will never have a chance to find out with the way we go through it.

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  8. Tracy, as many times as I have made this roast, and you know I make it frequently, I JUST noticed that while your instructions say "slather it all over" with butter, your picture shows it only on the top and sides, which means not on the ends or the bottom! So glad I saw this because my almost-four-pound roast takes about 3 sticks of butter. Since I buy the "good stuff" at $6/lb (but on sale for $2.50/lb), it will drop the cost of butter significantly. I also noticed that you have very little liquid/drippings on your pan when it is done, which tells me that you probably use about a stick of butter, not 3 or 4. See? Even after doing this dozens of times I still check for new stuff.

    Next time I come through Austin, we will have to do lunch. Face-to-face is so much better than web convo.

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