Off-Oven Roast Beef
- Total Time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 1beef roast, like top, eye or bottom round, approximately 3 pounds
- 1tablespoon kosher salt
- 1tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
- 3cloves garlic, peeled and minced
- 1tablespoon olive oil
- Red-pepper flakes to taste
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Preparation
- Step 1
Remove roast from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
- Step 2
In a small bowl, mix together salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and red-pepper flakes to create a kind of paste. Rub this all over the roast. Place beef in a roasting pan or cast-iron skillet, fat-side up, and put in oven. Cook undisturbed for 5 minutes per pound.
- Step 3
Turn off oven. Do not open oven door. Leave roast to continue cooking, undisturbed, for two hours.
- Step 4
After two hours, remove roast from oven. Slice and serve alongside, ideally, a watercress salad, some skillet-fried potatoes and a small tureen of Henry Bain sauce.
Private Notes
Comments
I call this Magic Meat and make it almost every week. (In fact, I made it just last night). Here’s the trick: you must follow the recipe EXACTLY. Take the roast out of the fridge right before you turn on the oven. This means the roast is COLD when it goes in. (If you start with room-temp meat, it’ll be too done in the middle.) You roast at 500 for EXACTLY 5 minutes per pound. I ask Siri: “How much is 2.85 times 5?” Then I roast for 14.25 minutes, using a timer. Timer for the 2 hrs. oven off too!
We like our roast beef rare so I left in the oven for one hour instead of two. Perfect!
Leave it off!
My 3lb roast hit 145 before the 15 minute 500 degree step was done. It was 187 after an hour of the oven off. And yes I calibrated the oven. I left it in for science’s sake despite the early high temp. Followed the recipe to the letter so I guess this one just isn’t for me.
I’ve been cooking roasts this way for 30 years, and they always turn out perfect. I learned it growing up in the south, where the nice old ladies called it a “church roast” — the idea being that you turned your oven off as you headed out for church, and by the time you got home, it was perfectly ready for Sunday lunch. My family has a variation every holiday. We’ve done it with leg of lamb as well, and it always turns out great.
Made a 2 lb roast in a cast iron. Only let it sit in the oven for an hour after turning it off, which was perfect. The bottom half was more done than the tip half, which may be due to the cast iron pan. I would try it again sitting on a raised rack in a roasting pan.
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