Teeth Cracking Eye of Round Roast

I hosted my first holiday dinner this year. While I've had a high batting average on new dishes, this particular dinner was not a hit.

Without doing much research on different cuts of meat, I took a trip to Costco beforehand and bought a six-pound hunk of eye of round roast. For those who don't know, the eye of round roast is taken from the cow's upper hind leg where there is a lot of muscle. As a result, the meat is tough, and doesn't have the same marble as you'd see from a softer cut (such as a rib eye). This is what makes the cut less desirable, and thus, less expensive.

And what you save on price, you pay in embarrassment. Even though I marinated the beef for 28 hours and left it medium rare, it remained tough enough to break a few plastic forks and stress my guests' jaws from chewing--an unfortunate result given all the hard work put into the dish. I couldn't help but apologize for the cut and pour more wine in their glasses.

My guests did enjoy the taste, which was a result of the marinade and seasoning. Here's what I did:

1) Mix 1 cup of vegetable oil, 1 cup of whiskey, fresh thyme and dried basil. Marinade the beef in this for about 24 hours.

2) Pat the beef dry and lightly season it with salt and paprika. Heavily coat it with black pepper.

3) Cover the meat with bacon, then roast in your oven to your desired finish.

Give it a try. Just don't buy the eye of round roast.

Happy holidays, everyone.

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Making My Best Beef

I recently attended Chef Sabrina Sexton’s “Best of Beef” course at the Institute of Culinary Education. I am shamelessly carnivorous, and cooking quality pieces of steak is something that I have wanted to learn for a long time.

The recipe I took home from the class is the filet of beef with shallots and ruby port wine. I recreated the meal at home, and found the dish to be shockingly simple to make. The number of ingredients used is minimal. I only needed ruby port wine, olive oil, rosemary, shallots, veal stock and butter.

My main takeaway from this experience? Don’t be afraid to splurge on a good bottle of ruby port wine. It makes the sauce so much richer and sweeter.

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