Full Rib Roast

This is an expensive cut of beef – but is undoubtedly our favourite and ultimate special occasion roast beef.   Weights will vary per breed of cow, but for example a Belted Galloway 4-bone rib will weigh in the region of 6-6.5KG.   This should feed 10 – 12 people.    Or 8 with plenty left over for cottage pie or sandwiches the next day or so.

I would NOT do this roast without a meat thermometer.   Thermometers range between £12 for a simple temp probe up to £120 for a leave in gadget that will blue tooth your phone with the temperatures as you enjoy a glass of wine with your guests.   The cheaper ones are absolutely fine. 

A full roast beef is actually very easy to do – but please do follow these key steps.  

Take the beef out of the fridge 2 hours before starting to get it up to room temperature.  Put your oven on to 250 or 275 degrees – whichever is higher.   Cut the onion into thick slices and roughly chop a carrot.  Cut a whole clove of garlic in half sideways. 

Place the onion slices under the joint – in a substantial roasting pan – essentially to keep the under-side of the beef off the pan base.  [its worth spending a bit of money to get a decent roasting pan]. 

Rub the joint all over with olive oil and crush sea salt into the joint all over.   Don’t be shy with the salt on the fatty side.

Now put the pan with joint into the hot oven – for 30-40 minutes – this is the sizzle stage. Once this is done turn your oven down to 160 degrees C and add your carrots, rosemary and garlic. As a rule of thumb – roast your joint now for 12 minutes per 500g. So if your joint is 6kg, the roasting time will be (6000/500)*12 = 144 minutes. 2.4 hours.  However this is strictly a guide. It is really important to probe your joint regularly after 1.5 hours at the 160 temperature. You are looking for a temperature of around 51-52 degrees. At this temperature remove from the oven and cover with foil and a couple of tea towels to rest the meat. You can comfortably rest the beef for an hour – giving you plenty of time to make your sides. See our Butcher’s Quarter Roast Potato recipe.

I will only discuss gravy here. With the meat resting, put the roasting pan back on the stove top on a medium heat.  Once it is sizzling a little, put in a splash of wine [red or white works] and scrape all the black stuff from the base. The onions and carrots will be soft – you can crush the carrots and garlic with a fork to extract more flavour.  Pour off any excess fat at this point and add a spoon of plain flour.  Add an organic BQ beef stock and check for seasoning. I would add some tomato puree here too and water depending on consistency – stir and heat.  

Put this all through a sieve to remove the veg remnants and slowly reduce this to the kind of runniness you like! Once the beef has rested for an hour or so – remove the 4 bones – simply bend those away from the meat and slide your knife down one edge. Keep the bones for presentation!  

With a nice sharp knife, slice the beef as you like it and [I prefer to] place slice by slice back in the roasting pan. Give the beef a final season and pour over the gravy – with the bones at one end!

Lovely Jubbly.

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