My First ROAST BEEF

This will be our first beef post. I am guessing since beef is more expensive than chicken (our favorite by far in # of postings) that we opted not to cook as much of this ingredient.


I am by far not an expert at cooking beef. If you ask me, I can only say I am an intermediate cook- I have some knowledge but less likely to enter a "masterchef" kind of thingy. (most of my knowledge comes from watching all those cooking shows)


So, let's talk beef.


The only way I can eat roast beef is when I go to hotels and they have a buffet. The concept of making one in actuality was really far from my mind. It's a challenge but I was thinking it would be hard. (like trying to run 21k~ which I still haven't mustered the guts to do... yeah, I love to cook and eat!~ running needs a person to be thin!!!)


The first thing was finding a recipe. I got one thru an free application on my iphone. Foodnetwork application. (really helpful) You can search by ingredient and a list of all recipes comes up. You can choose the ones you like and click add to my recipes and it gets automatically  added. You can go back to the my recipes icon and view all your recipes quickly. AAHHH... the wonders of technology!! Don't you just love it? So here's my first roast beef recipe:


Beef Tenderloin with peppercorn sauce


2 pounds beef tenderloin (900grams)
1 tsp dry oregano leaves crushed
1 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp black pepper, crushed
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp dry thyme, crushed
1 tsp paprika (I used spanish paprika since it was what I had)



Peppercorn sauce




1 1/2 cups Marsala wine  (you can use red wine here.. I had left over marsala wine from doing the  chicken marsala.. )
1 cup chicken broth (used chicken bouillon diluted in hot water)
1 clove garlic, chopped
10 whole peppercorns (I think I used more than 10- had some nice red/ green ones on hand)
1 cup whipping cream
2 tsp dijon mustard ( I only had french- so I used that)
salt and pepper, to taste


heat oven to 425F (about 210C)
combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

For the tenderloin, make sure it has no more white slivers (ask your butcher to take them out) They are the sinews and might make your meat chewy and tough.
Rub the dry ingredient all over the tenderloin and place in rack on a roasting pan.


Place meat thermometer in the center of the beef. Do not cover or place water at the bottom. Allow the roast to cook to 35-40 minutes for medium rare


When the meat thermometer reads 135F (mine actually read more than that~ I just went by the time given) remove roast from oven and cover with aluminum foil and allow to sit for 10 minutes. The temperature will rise to 145F. transfer roast to carving board (I had none) and let rest for another 5-10 before slicing. Cut into 1/2 inch thickness

while the meat is resting, you can make your peppercorn sauce. Put the roasting pan over a flame. Add wine, broth, peppercorns and garlic and bring to simmer until liquids are reduced. (the original asked you to simmer 20 mins... I was afraid my liquid will be all gone so I went by sight and it turned out about only 6 minutes or so). add the cream and mustard and simmer while stirring for another 6 minutes or until the sauce thickens and is reduced again. Season to taste.

bubbling away...

I was honestly amazed at how perfectly done it was when we sliced it. just the right color!

yummy!

Notes on this: You have to time this to more or less what time you will serve. I had to wait for 20 minutes for my husband to come home so I out the roast back into the oven. (I did not turn it back on--it was still hot). The sauce was actually more than we could consume for the totality of the roast. (unless you REALLY like a lot of sauce, the amount of sauce generated was a lot. either that I  didn't reduce enough)... oh well, the taste of the sauce was good though. peppery and creamy just what a peppercorn sauce should be! (I was thinking if I reduced too much, it might become too salty since the sauce was ok at this point..)


This is actually quite easy to make (to my surprise).. the only hard part is the measuring of the dry ingredients. It one of those things people think you slaved over but actually didn't! hahaha. 


I also should note that the SMELL of the kitchen when you put this in the oven is soooooo good! I was convinced it was going to be delish just by how the kitchen smelled while it was roasting. Even my 11 year old son came down and asked, "What smells so delicious?"(my ears were flapping when he said that). The TASTE ~ it was tender (ok....so I used tenderloin). But the doneness was just how we liked it. Kind of medium well done with a little pink on the middle. (too well done and the meat becomes really tough and dry). I wish I had the stomach to consume all that meat.. we had some leftovers that hubby brought to work the next day with a side salad (still yummy)- my sister in law even asked if it was store bought (yipee hurray! ear flap ear flap!!)


with all the compliments I got from this... I AM SURE YOU should try this! Happy cooking!