Roast Beef, Take One

Yep, take one. Until just a week or so ago I was a roast beef virgin. I had never made a beef roast other than pot roast. Large cuts that need to be timed carefully intimidated me, you see. They tend to be expensive. Which makes screwing them up much worse than, say, some chicken breasts and I have a tendency to overcook things. Plus I don't have a very good thermometer (I really need to get an instant read one) and you shouldn't really cut into it to take a peek to see how it's doing. So, I avoided oven roasts for years. Then my girlfriend came home with a three and a half pound chunk of top round roast. "Look what was on sale!", she said. Oooo-kay. Well, it's too lean to do pot roast, it really needed to be done in the oven. So I did it. And it came out spectacular. It had a great crust and rich, beefy flavor. You can't really tell from the shot, but it was just medium (my girlfriend isn't a medium rare fan). Unfortunately, almost none of my pictures came out. I don't know what happened, but almost all the shots were wicked blurry or dark. So I'm not going to post the whole dealie with this one. But I'm going to be making another one soon and I will time it to get better light and maybe put some fresh batteries in my camera before I start. I pretty much used this method from The Hungry Mouse, with a few minor changes. But like I said, I'll post a recipe after I make it again. This is the roast I made that roast beef hash with, not to mention several really good sandwiches.

Since this post is a bit scanty, here's a behind the scenes shot: The real Bob isn't usually interested when I'm taking pictures, but something about this time got his attention. Can't imagine what...

Remember what I was saying about not having a good thermometer? Check this out: I don't know what temperature you're supposed to cook prok too, but I'm never cooking chicken to 185.