- What are we doing today?
- Sandwich boys!
- Whoa!
Is that me?
Is that you?
- It's us.
- (in unison) Sandwich boys!
- [Brent] We've talked ham.
- [Ben] We've talked ham.
- [Brent] We've talked bologna;
- [Ben] We didn't just talk it, we walked it.
Making plenty of sandwiches left and right.
Haven't talked roast beef.
- No we haven't.
- Classic deli meat.
- The pinnacle.
- And today, we're gonna turn this
into roast beef.
(intro music)
All right, we've talked plenty of beef leg before,
but we haven't talked about the bottom round,
so we're just going to go through,
break this down real quick,
and talk some roast beef.
- Brent, I'm noticing as you're cutting
that this fat is so yellow.
You normally see that pristine white fat
you're used to seeing in the grocery store.
With older animals,
this being what is classified as an over-30,
that means over 30 months,
and also being grass fed,
you get this nice, rich yellow.
The more yellow it is,
the more packed with flavor it is.
Why are you breaking this on this doohickey here?
- We're doing this from the rail
just so I can use gravity as its own tool.
I can pull down with one arm
and find the seams a little bit easier,
and don't have to do the same work of pushing and pulling
on the table.
- You're also cutting along
what seem to be, like, natural seams.
- All we're doing is following each muscle.
The easiest way to learn butchery
is just by following each seam.
It's something we do with every piece of the animal.
Just take every muscle off, piece by piece.
That way you can use each muscle
to it's greatest capability.
- [Ben] You're at bottom round, right?
- Bottom round.
- Bottom round, we got our baby.
We got our baby, baby.
You can see, like,
Brent's just following the natural line,
and now we have our bottom round.
Boom!
You might have noticed that when you have roast beef,
it looks a lot nicer than this does.
We're just gonna clean this up so it has a nice angle,
so it'll roast evenly,
and getting rid of as much silver skin as possible.
There's some really thick silver skin on this.
Brent, how would you describe the differences
between the top round and the bottom round?
- I think the only reason to talk
about the bottom round
is for making roast beef.
The bottom round is not a steak;
it is a roast, hence roast beef.
It has much thicker muscle grain,
so it needs to be cooked at a lower temperature
for a longer period of time
in order for it to actually be somewhat tender.
This muscle, in and of itself,
is really not good for anything else
but deli-style roast beef.
It gives us an option of something else to offer
out of the shop,
so we can save a rib roast or a top round
for other cuts
and turn this into something totally delicious.
When I think of roast beef,
I like super rare roast beef.
I want something that is big,
you can slice thin, and cooked really rare.
So if you took a smaller muscle,
maybe just part of this eye of round,
and tried to make that into roast beef,
yeah, it would work,
but it's really not big enough
to cook to an internal temperature
to be rare and still get a nice sear on the outside.
- That's about it.
We just wanna have a face on each side.
This is generally pretty much all the same size,
so it'll cure the same and roast the same.
And we don't really need to worry
about taking any more of this fat off.
- It has a nice little bit of a fat cap on top,
which is a really nice texture, again,
when sliced thin,
really no inner muscular fat.
I think that's one of the things that makes it
so perfect for roast beef,
is that you don't have to worry
about rendering that fat down at all.
You can just keep it low, slow, consistent,
and just barely cook it through.
- It took a few minutes to get off the leg,
a few minutes to clean it up,
and now we're ready to season it.
So we have our bottom round,
and then we have our seasonings.
- I mean you really don't have to go crazy
with your seasoning.
Buy good beef, salt, pepper, rosemary.
- That's it.
We use fresh rosemary.
The flavor it imparts is just much much better
than dry rosemary,
especially for something that we're going to let marinate
for two days.
You can add more stuff,
but you're gonna probably be eating this roast beef
with something else,
so let those other things bring their part to the party.
- We're going to coat this entire thing evenly,
but we wanna use all of the seasoning.
- And you really don't have to worry
about over-seasoning something like this
because there's only so much surface area
for the salt to cover.
And because it is such a big muscle,
it's gonna take a day or two
for all of that salt to penetrate in,
so you don't really have to worry about it
becoming too salty or something like that.
There we go.
Since we sell so much of this,
we actually already have one in cure,
ready to get cooked,
so we can go downstairs, cook it,
and we can eat it.
- Yeah!
(upbeat music)
So we end up cooking this
at 275, 300
for about three hours,
and we just do a quick blast of heat
right at the beginning
just to get a crust on the outside.
Low and slow,
make sure that it doesn't cook too much.
You want it to stay rare in the middle.
(upbeat music)
- Let's cut this puppy,
so we can make some sandwich maybe.
(upbeat music)
Oh yeah, baby!
- Oh yeah!
- Gotta say, it looks gorgeous.
Turns out if you've done this a thousand times,
it turns out good.
We got our roast beef,
let's slice it, let's try it.
- [Brent] Great!
(upbeat music)
Good looking beef, Ben!
- Mmm.
Mmmm!
Let's get in there.
Look at that!
(impressed whistle)
Cheers.
I mean, you got the salt,
you actually get a decent amount of the pepper,
but you also get the rosemary
even after just sitting on the outside of it
for two days.
I think it's the only herb that'll actually stand up to it,
and you're getting all three things.
- Totally, and you get them because the leg muscle
does a ton of work.
Huge beefy flavor,
doesn't need anything more than just salt,
and, you know, rosemary really stands up to it.
But with good beef, you can't go wrong.
- Brent, there's only so much roast beef I can look at
before I need to eat a sandwich.
- Yeah, this isn't going on a charcuterie platter.
- No, no, no, no, no.
- Let's make some sandwiches.
- Let's eat a sandwich.
- Okay.
- The only thing you can do with roast beef. (upbeat music)
- [Brent] Whoa, is that a f****** sandwich?
- Let's get beefy.
- A little beefy baby.
- I love you. I love you.
How else are you supposed to eat roast beef?
- With a horseradish mayo.
It is perfection.
- I don't care how you make a sandwich,
just make a sandwich with it.
- The amazing thing is that you actually still
taste the roast beef.
- Roast beef, that's how you do it.
Now, can I get a bite of your sandwich?
- Sure.
It's so good.
- Really good sandwich.
(outro music)