There are a lot of recipes online, but I’d rather hear from you guys. How can I get this to taste like an old fashioned beef roast? The kind that you can use the drippings for to make a nice dark brown gravy? Is this an ok cut for that sort of thing?
Also, how can I make a dark brown gravy?
I have a crock pot and a dutch oven, but no barbecue. Help please, it’s what’s for dinner.
You don’t want to slow cook it, so no dutch oven or crockpot. How big is the joint? Topside may not have the marbled fat ideal for a rich roast, but it’s doable.
Fill the bottom of a roasting tray with roughly chopped veg (carrots, celery, onion, plus a few cloves of garlic, some parsley and fresh sprigs of rosemary if you have it), drizzle this lot with a little oil and season with salt and pepper. This is going to help flavour your gravy.
Sit the joint on top, liberally seasoned with salt and pepper and drizzled with oil. Don’t cover with foil or anything as you want the outside to crisp up - that’s where you’ll get the lovely roast flavour. Roast on a very high heat for 20-30 mins (depends on size of joint), then turn the oven down to a medium heat and roast for the following times:
15 minutes per pound for rare
20 minutes per pound for medium rare
25 for medium, etc
It’s helpful if you have a meat thermometer: 120F = rare, 140F = medium, for example.
Take out and leave the meat to rest on a plate under some foil while you prepare the gravy. This rest is important, as the meat relaxes and becomes more tender. Rest for 20-30 mins.
For the gravy, you’ll need some boiling water, plain flour, red wine and perhaps a beef stock cube.
Spoon out the fat from the roasting tray, leaving any meat juices. If you’re lacking in meat juices because your cut was too lean in fat, then add a stock cube. On a low heat, whisk in a tablespoon of flour. When it bubbles, add a small glass of wine and let it cook for a few minutes. Then add some boiling water and let it cook through until you have a nice gravy consistency. Strain the gravy to remove the roasted vegetables and you’re done.
I’m no help on gravy but my go-to seasoning (apart from S&P) is sage and onion powder (or, you know, actual onions).
As noted, if you want “old-fashioned roast”, slow cooking is out. Have you got a meat thermometer?
If you do want to slow cook it - and top round is a good cut for it - this online recipe looks pretty solid (although I’d still add dried sage to it).
I do have a thermometer and the roast is 2.2 pounds. Not too big.
Thank you San Vito. Nicely detailed!
Pleasure. In that case, roast on high for just 20 minutes (this phase is known the The Sizzle and really gets the fat well flavoured and crispy).
The thermometer is your best friend here, there’s nothing worse than an overdone joint.
Some people like to add a rub to the joint, such as mustard powder. I don’t think it really needs it if you’re making your own lovely gravy, but you may like to experiment
Your best bet is going to be to salt the roast, wrap it up in plastic wrap, and let it sit for 24 hours. This basically works a lot like brining chicken or pork, and will make it more tender and flavorful overall.
Then when it’s time to cook, oil it up, sear it on all sides in something like a cast iron skillet on high heat, and then put your handy-dandy leave-in probe thermometer, and cook it at 225 until the center is at 115/125, (medium rare - 115, medium - 125).
Cut the heat, and let it coast until the internal temps are 130/140. Take it out to a carving board, let it rest for 15 minutes, carve thinly and serve.
(this is a rough adaptation of the Cooks Illustrated “Improving cheap roast beef” article’s method, and it works very well in my experience.)
And if you don’t have a leave-in probe thermometer, you really ought to go get one. Cooking big stuff like roast beef, turkeys, large steaks, and so on, goes from being guesswork (“30 mins per lb”) to being precise, since you can tell what the internal temp is, you can leave in/take out as necessary.
My mom always made swiss steak. Something like this, though I’m sure she had a less complicated recipe…
I always wondered what Switzerland had to do with it and the answer is: nothing.
A method of tenderizing meat, which has been floured and seasoned, by pounding it to break up the muscle fibers. This tenderizing method is generally used on beef.
Cooking it in the tomato sauce (acid) really tenderizes it further. The sauce…drool.
Here’s a slow cooker version:
The Swiss Steak is my go-to for round steak. I add garlic, bay leaves, a pinch of rosemary, A-1 and a pinch of allspice or ground cloves. We liked to put the veg in the blender, preferring a smoother sauce.
With respect, I’m going to quibble with SanVito’s instructions. Not because they’re in any way bad, but because I have Feelings about gravy and because the Dope is the place to quibble.
Salt, pepper, and oil the meat. Sear it all sides on the bottom of your dutch oven. This is an essential step for getting good gravy later. Remove the roast and add your layer of veggies.* Return the roast to its tray. Cook on medium-high to the internal temperature you like, per SanVito’s recipe. You don’t need the initial blast of heat since you’ve already seared it.
When the roast is where you want it, remove the meat and veggies from the dutch oven. The bottom of the pan should consist of some burny bits (fond) from your earlier searing and some fat. If you have more than about two tablespoons of fat, pour the extra off and reserve it. If you have less, add some butter or oil. If you have a bunch of juice (you probably won’t unless you had a bunch of onions or mushrooms and there wasn’t enough time for released water to evaporate), reserve it. If there are any burny bits that look like they went full charcoal, get rid of them.
Heat the fat and whisk in the flour. Get a good whiff of it and take note of the raw flour smell. Whisk continuously until the raw smell goes away. Add a bit of liquid (red wine or beef stock are both good choices). Stir hard to dislodge all the fond from the bottom of the pan. Return any reserved beefy juices (but not fat) to the pan. Add a couple cups of beef stock or water (a bit more than whatever you think you need) and cook it slowly until it thickens to gravy consistency. Enjoy!
*if you have a roasting rack, ditch the veggie layer and cook them elsewhere.
I’m not going to disagree with anyone. But i want to emphasize:
I think most of the options to increase flavor have been discussed, and I’d agree - brine/marinate to offset the very lean and dry nature of the traditional top round roast. Once cooked (no more than medium I’d say at most), fully rest before cutting or puncturing.
A couple of tips and tricks I haven’t seen, and of course are conditional to your needs and desires.
Cook with additional fat. When roasting, add several slices of thick cut, fatty bacon (smoked bacon is also good!). You see similar suggestions for people wanting less-dry thanksgiving turkeys. When you add the bacon depends if you do the high hear first or near the end, but you want for the longer, lower temp roasting. This will help with the mouth feel from a more marbled roast, and will help with possible dryness.
Cut very, very, VERY thin with a sharp knife, against the grain. Top round is flavorful but even at best tends to be rather tough. If you cut super thin and against the grain, the fibers will be very short, and far less chewy. This will again lead to a texture more similar to a ‘traditional’ beef roast.
CHEAT - on occasion, I have been known to use a meat tenderizer in a marinade or brine. Various Bromelain tenderizers can be a great deal of help in combatting toughness, without perhaps the extra work above, but fair warning - watch for the darn salt. Most commercial tenderizers (McCormicks, I am loooooking at you) tend to be mostly salt and/or sugar with just a touch of bromelain/other tenderizing agents. This can lead to serious over-seasoning of your food, although a touch of sugar will help with the browning you mentioned as a positive.
So if you do use a chemical tenderizer (don’t be scared by the term though), you’ll want to adjust the rest of your prep to take the additional salt and sugar into account. The times I do use it, I use the tenderizer blend as part of my brine (3-4 hours) and then rinse and rest while I preheat the oven (say 20-30 minutes).
Oh, that reminds me, regarding best browning: in most cases, trust NOT your oven! @SanVito discusses the sizzle option (and you can do before or after, options for both), but if you’re doing it upfront, don’t start when your oven says it’s preheated. In most cases, that’s still the air that’s hot, not the oven itself. I normally wait at least 10 minutes past the pre-heat if I need a nice hard heat.
You could thicken up the gravy if you had some Bisto. Get some for next time.
With respect, I’m going to quibble with SanVito and Johnny_Bravo, because that’s what you do on message boards. Two things:
Oh, and I definitely agree with JB - make the gravy in the roasting pan. Don’t waste a bit of the drippings!
@not_what_you_d_expect sooooo … how’d it come out?
It’s in the oven now. I had already purchased some vegetables so I’m roasting them at the same time, but in a separate pan.
I wish a couple of you would get over here and cook for me! Your ideas sound so delicious. I am anxious to try the Swiss steak.
I ended up having to work a full day today, thus I was a little tired, so I just sort of mixed several of your ideas. I stuffed some garlic in there and rubbed the meat with olive oil and generous helpings of salt and pepper. And that’s it for this one. Next time, I’ll purchase some fresh herbs and maybe a beef cube.
I just checked it and the temp is 95F, so not too much longer, but I’m getting almost no drippings. I don’t think I’m going to get any gravy.
Well, good eats to you then!
Yeah, almost all Top Round is so lean that you may get some meat juices out of it (although little IMHO) but almost no fat drippings. In my experience, if you want a budget beef cut with flavor that will leave you in gravy-land, you can go with a chuck roast. But that’s for another shopping day.
I use top round for homemade beef jerky, where being super lean is a pro rather than a con. 
It feels tough when I stab it with the thermometer so maybe that’s why it was so affordable.
The veggies are looking great and the beef is almost ready to come out.
So, to close this episode of trying to figure out beef, this is tasty enough, but too chewy and I got no gravy.
And now I need to come up with a way to use 2.2 pounds of it.
Thank you all for your help.
The vegetables enhance the flavour of the gravy - you never made stock?
Gravy doesn’t magically happen because you’ve roasted a hunk of meat - you have to make it. The meat will have leaked some juices into the vegetables even if you can’t see much liquid, hence the need to add a stock cube, along with flour, wine and water.
But, yeah, topside isn’t great for roasts (or much of anything, if you ask me). Now, ask us about fore rib, and now you’re talking.