So in spite of being the kind of person who has an entire 5’ high bookshelf full of cookbooks, I am currently in the middle of roasting my very first big hunk of nearly unadorned meat. It’s a nearly 5 lb. hunk of top round roast, which I brought almost to room temperature, then (per Joy of Cooking recommendations) slit all over and then poked slivers of garlic mixed with thyme, rosemary, black pepper, and sea salt into the slits. I rubbed some olive oil and the rest of the herb/garlic mixture over the top and stuck it in the oven in a roasting pan at 450F for 15 minutes, and then turned it down to 250.
What Joy doesn’t seem to tell me, though, is how long the darn thing will take to reach medium (140F). My instincts generally tell me that low heat for the bulk of the cooking time is the way to go, but am I going to be eating dinner at midnight? How should I proceed from here if I want to have dinner at, say, 7:30? When should I throw in the other veggies I want to roast with it (onions, potatoes, carrots, etc.)?
Damn, even after 20 minutes it’s starting to smell good in here - I don’t want to screw this up. Advice please?
It should be done by now, how did it go? My advice: Get a meat thermometer, preferably electronic, and set the alarm to five degrees below your desired level of doneness. Let the roast rest for 10-15 minutes after you take it out of the oven, and tent with foil. The carryover heat should raise the internal temperature the rest of the way.
Update: it took more like 3+ hours, and still came out a fair bit rarer than I would have liked (and yes, I do have a thermometer; apparently either it needs to be recalibrated, or I have a very different idea of “medium” than the books do, because 140 degrees was still pretty damn bloody). Oh well - at least I’m less likely to overcook the leftovers.
America’s Test Kitchen also recommends roasting big hunks of meat at 250. The meat turns out very tender and a fairly uniform rare or medium rare or whatever throughout the meat, with a thin line of browned meat on the outside (they recommend searing before putting in the oven, and a 20 min or so blast of 500 degrees at the end)
This must be the new Joy, right? Because the old Joy has you preheat the oven to 500, then put in the meat and reduce to, I think, 350. This new way sounds interesting. And I’m roasting a big hunk o’meat tomorrow. Hmm.
Now, now, no bickering! I already have TWO hunks of meat - the one that I cooked on Sunday, and the one who got to eat the results. Sorry - I’m attached.
(Actually, I’m not at all sorry I’m attached. He’s a real sweetie.)
Now if you want to share your own respective hunks of meat with each other, who am I to interfere? Just make sure things don’t get too hot - you want your hunk of meat to be nice and juicy and succulent, don’t you? Proper moisture levels are VERY important in the…kitchen, yeah, that’s it! Kitchen!
ETA: don’t forget to pay careful attention to the slits. The way you treat whatever you rub in the slits is very important if you want the best possible outcome.
I bought an electronic meat thermometer not to long ago. It has a probe, silicon tube, and computer unit that it plugs into. What is nice is that after it has a chance to calculate how long it is taking the meat to heat, it predicts what time it will be done at. That way you can adjust the heat a little if it is too late or too soon.
I’ve got my almost 5-lb roast beef in the oven now, cooking slooooowly at 250. I didn’t get to put the herb mixture in (it’s Halloween and I just didn’t have time, what with the kids’ costumes, work, and trick or treating). But I’m looking forward to eating it tonight, followed by some Snickers bars or something else extraordinarily bad for me.
Don’t you have the edition of TJoC with the special appendix? It’s a couple of pages with the heat transfer coeffecients of just about every cut of meat you can name.
Lets you calculate your roasting times by Fourier equation.
Well, I tried the new method (roasting at 250), and I’m not sure it’s any better than the old method (preheating the oven to 500, then reducing immediately to 350 when you put the meat in). It did take 3+ hours to cook (thanks for the head’s up). I like it rare to med-rare, so I took it out at 140 degrees. It would have taken about 30 to 40 minutes less, I think, at 350. It was good, but I don’t know if it was worth the longer cook time.
Definitions of doneness have changed over time. You can compare traditional and modern temps for rare through well here. Traditionally, 140 is on the low side of “medium,” but most places today will cook medium to about 160 or so. I’ve also noticed there’s difference between restaurants, and in some places I need to order “rare” to get what I call “medium rare.”
