Roast Beef with Red Wine Gravy

Ingredients

• 1.8 kg rolled sirloin or topside
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 onions, thickly sliced
• 2 carrots, halved lengthways
• a few sprigs of thyme
• 25 g plain flour
• 250 ml red wine
• 600 ml beef stock
• 2 tsp english mustard

Method

1. Take it out of the fridge

   Bring the joint to room temperature for at least an hour and dry the surface thoroughly. A fridge-cold joint cooks unevenly — grey outside, raw in the middle — and a wet one will not brown.

   1 h

2. Sear it hard

   Season heavily and sear on every face in a hot pan until deeply browned. Do this on the hob, not by blasting the oven; the oven browns the outside long before the middle is anywhere near.

3. Roast on a vegetable trivet

   Sit the joint on the onions, carrots and thyme in a tin. The vegetables keep the meat off the metal and their juices become the base of the gravy.

4. Cook to temperature, not time

   Roast at 190°C to an internal 52°C for rare or 58°C for medium — roughly 15 minutes per 500 g, but a thermometer is the only reliable answer.

   55 min

5. Rest, then make the gravy

   Rest the beef somewhere warm for a full 20 minutes. Meanwhile, put the tin on the hob, stir the flour into the fat and vegetables, add the wine and let it bubble away, then the stock and mustard, and strain.

   20 min

6. Carve

   Carve across the grain, as thin as you can, adding any juice from the board to the gravy. Resting is not optional here — carved early, most of the juice ends up on the board instead of in the meat.