Description
An easy recipe for a herb and mustard crusted joint or roast beef, including cooking instructions for rare, medium-rare and medium roast beef – perfect for family celebrations such as to enjoy on New Years Day!
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 x boneless beef joint to serve 4-6 people (we used topside)
- 1 large red onion
- freshly ground sea salt & black pepper
- 20g (very large handful) flat leaf parsley
- 1 1/2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
Instructions
- First, weigh your beef and work out the cooking time. For rare beef in a 220 degree (425 farenheit) oven you want to allow 10-15 minutes cooking time for every 450g of beef, 15 minutes for medium rare, and 20 minutes for medium. Also look at the shape of your joint; these timings are for your beef at it’s fattest point, if it has a narrow bit at the end, that will cook quicker, for example. This can work out really well depending on your family; I love rare beef so like the bit from the fat middle, but my parents prefer medium-rare meat, so are happier with the bit at the tail end of the topside. Also, regardless of your preferences, rare beef makes the best sandwiches, so if you go medium-rare and it is still a little less cooked to your liking, save the slices from the very middle for later! You’ll also want to allow 30 minutes resting time once the beef has come out of the oven before serving.
- Pre-heat the oven. Thickly slice the onion – don’t worry about peeling it – and arrange the slices in the middle of your roasting tin on which to rest the beef. This ‘trivet’ will collect the juices from the beef as it cooks, and soften up a fair bit to help add more flavour to your pan gravy while the beef is resting.
- Season the beef well all over with lots of salt and pepper before placing it on the onion trivet. Roast the beef as per the timings you’ve figure out.
- Remove the beef from the pan and transfer to a large plate. Cover with tin foil, and leave to rest for half an hour while you put the vegetables on, turn the roast potatoes over, make the beef crust and make some pan gravy.
- To make the crust, chop the parsley well. Remove the foil from the beef and transfer any resting juices to the gravy pan. Transfer the joint to a carving board, and smear every bit of the joint except for the two sliceable ends with the mustard and gently press the herbs all over the mustard to form a crust. Bring to the table in order to carve immediately.