Roast Beast

DAD gets feedback on the blog. In person the general consensus is "please post less food and more adorable babies." Okay, but when he looks at page views, food posts remain among the most popular. So someone is enjoying them.

For Christmas the New Family Dad made rib roast.

Above is what 133 degrees looks like. Dad would've preferred 125 degrees, but this was cooked to order for the New Family guests (who contributed money to its purchase, so darn right they were going to get it their way).

Notice the lack of ANY gray meat? Many roasts are brown on the surface, with a wide swath of gray and a small circular pink or even red center. That is roast #fail.

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The best method of preparation Dad has found is to dry age the roast for 4 ~ 7 days in the refrigerator. He coats the entire roast in kosher salt, wraps it in dish towels, and changes them daily.

On the day of service, he coats the roast in oil and browns all sides of it in a heavy porcelain coated cast iron pot. The dryer the surface, the better and faster it browns. Speed is extremely important because the heat at the surface begins to cook the roast leading to the unwanted gray meat.

Then he allows the surface and internal temperature to reach equilibrium, about 30 minutes of just sitting on the counter covered in aluminum. He inserts a probe thermometer into its center, and puts it into the oven, typically in the same cast iron pot (deglazed and cleaned of course).

Any spices to flavor the exterior go on at this point. Dad's guests prefer plain to highly seasoned, so he skipped that this time.

Then he brings the oven temp up to 200 degrees, holds it there for about 1/4 hour, and then reduces it to 10 degrees above his desired final cooking temperature, 135 degrees here. While warming to 200 degrees, he takes the cast iron pot's surface temperature with an infrared thermometer. The pot never exceeds 175 degrees.

Why such a cool oven? An oven is analogous to a car where heat is speed. Imagine a car that needs to stop at a precise point on the pavement with a margin for error of 1 inch in front of or behind that point. Which car will stop more closely to that point, the one traveling 10 m.p.h. or the other traveling at 70 m.p.h.?

Fast ovens, those at 350 degrees and above, cause the roast to continue cooking even when removed from the oven. It is possible to pull it from the oven a few degrees before final doneness, but you have to guess when to pull it. You have little control and a roast with widely varying internal temperature.

Slower ovens, in contrast, allow you much more control and distribute the heat much more uniformly throughout the roast. Moreover, you don't have to guess how much residual heat will carryover.

As the probe thermometer readings close in on desired doneness, he turns off the oven and keeps the door closed. Depending on the direction of internal temperature change (increasing or decreasing) he warms or cools the oven as necessary to maintain the roast at just a few degrees below final doneness.

He can hold the roast like this for very long periods of time, but it requires constant monitoring and temperature measurement.

Thus, late company is not appreciated.

He'll typically start the process on the day of service 6 hours before dinner. The final two hours are generally holding the roast at final doneness.

Then, about 20 minutes before service, he'll allow the roast to rest on the counter covered in foil, which he is told allows the juices to redistribute. He does not know if he believes this, but is not going to experiment on a $75 roast.

As far as sanitation is concerned, the surface of beef is the critical area of importance to reduce the growth of bacteria. Two measures limit bacterial growth, first the salt is very hostile to bacteria, second the browning in the pot kills whatever manage to hang around despite the salt. Unless penetrated with an unsanitary utensil, the interior of beef is generally safe to consume for healthy adults.

And as for holding a roast at a final temperature for extended periods, Dad reads Cooks Illustrated that food service will hold roasts at final doneness for up to 24 hours before service. So he is comfortable with the low and slow process or around six hours.

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