The Best Grass-Fed Beef Roast….Ever

This post is submitted to Real Food Wednesday and the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop!!

I’ve made a few grass-fed beef roasts in the past, and let’s just say they’ve left something to be desired. Grass-fed beef is not at all like conventional beef in its properties, as you may know. When I last attempted cooking a grass-fed beef roast, I basically had to boil it in beef broth to get it right, and the meat was still fairly tough, but it was palatable because of the delicious sauce. If you’re new to grass-fed beef, you can read about its many benefits here.

Well, that’s all in the past, now! Last night, I followed a recipe from Shannon Hayes’ Grassfed Gourmet cookbook, and it was tender, juicy, and delightfully seasoned. If you have the book, you can see the recipe for “Super-Slow-Roasted-Beef” on page 30. I’ll walk you through the way I made it:

You need to take the beef out of the fridge (assuming you let it thaw overnight from frozen) and let it come to room temperature while you get the rub ready. I used a round roast that was somewhere between 2 and 3 pounds. This is a total estimate – my beef from my farmer just comes in old fashioned red paper with a check beside the cut listed on the taping that seals it, and I don’t have a food scale (though I do want one!).

I wanted to make the herb and garlic rub (described in the back of the cookbook), but I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I improvised. I made a mixture of basil, rosemary, thyme and oregano (all dried) and I minced 4-5 garlic cloves, and added about a teaspoon of salt and 2 tsp. of pepper to the mix. I worked the mix around with my hands to break up the bits of herbs, and then rubbed it over the whole outside of the roast (sorry for the bad quality picture – I just want to give you a sense of the volume of the rub – it was a LOT – I would say more than 1/2 cup of rub in total – it’s all over the bottom too):

Then I loosely draped the roast with plastic, and let it sit on the counter for 2 hours. Next, I cooked it at 250F for 30 minutes, then brought the temperature down to 170F for close to 3 hours, but I wasn’t watching the clock, I was watching the meat thermometer. The recipe mentions that the ideal internal temperature for the roast is around 120-125F, but of course, my meat thermometer’s dial markings start at 130. So, I just cooked the roast until the marker was just below the 130 mark. Here it is fresh from the oven – note how dry the bottom of the pot is – all of the juices remained inside the roast:

I let the roast rest on the counter once it was done for a good 20 minutes (at that point, I put the lid on). It was juicy and a perfect medium-rare. I served it with mashed sweet potatoes whipped with butter, steamed spinach, and boiled beets (with lots of butter at the table). It was a delicious meal for the cold weather outside, and the best grass-fed beef we’ve ever had in our home.