Recipe
Roast Sirloin of Award Winning Beef
Roasting a sirloin of beef is not as difficult as you may have been led to believe. All you need for a great roast sirloin of beef is a tried and tested recipe (see below), a good heavy roasting tin, a generous amount of beef dripping, plenty of salt and pepper and a hot oven.
Top Tip No. 1 - Pre heat your oven
Top Tip No.2 - Pre heat your plates; they do not need to be so hot that the food continues to cook once you plate up. I recommend that the plates are just hot enough so that you can still pick them up with your bare hands.
Top Tip No.3 - You must take the beef out of the fridge at least two hours before you put into the oven, meat cooked from room temperature will always give a better result.
Before we begin to cook anything there is the small matter of how beef should be cooked. Should it be bleu, rare, medium rare, medium or well done? There is no right or wrong, it really is a personal choice but please bear in mind, the longer the beef cooks for the less moist, juicy and succulent it will be when you come to serve it. Remember once it is over cooked you can’t undo the process!
Top Tip No.4 - Cook the beef to rare, trust me on this. Once you take it out of the oven leave the sirloin joint to rest for 15 minutes before serving, this allows the juices to flow and the texture of the meat to relax. For those who prefer their meat cooked for a little longer, put some slices on to one of the prewarmed plates and pop it back into the oven for 3-4 minutes before serving, pour gravy over and dish up. Remember you can always cook the beef a touch more for those who like it less bloody.
Now we have that out of the way, let the cooking begin. Just a word in advance there are two parts to the process, searing and roasting. Part one is searing which locks in flavour, and juices as well as giving colour and part two is the roasting.
Part One, Searing - Take your roasting tin, put in a good tablespoon of dripping and place the tin into the hot oven until the dripping is smoking. At the same time turn on your hob, a medium heat 6 will do.
Once the dripping is smoking, remove the hot roasting tin from the oven and put it on the hot hob. NB use a good thick oven cloth or oven gloves and have your sleeves rolled down as dripping spits!
Take the beef and lay it fat side down in the roasting tin, 2 minutes, no more, next flip the sirloin joint over and cook for a further 2 minutes. Finally finish by searing the ends of the joint, about one minute for each end. Under no circumstances use a fork to help you do this as piercing the meat will spoil the locking in process, instead use a good pair of tongs, failing that have a clean cloth and hold the meat upright.
The beef is now ready for the second phase, roasting. With the sirloin joint seared all over, season well with rock salt and black pepper and put the roasting tray, with the beef in it, back into the oven. The joint can now be roasted, fat-side up, allowing 15 mins per 450g for rare, 18 mins per 450g for medium, 20 mins for medium-well and 30 mins for well done. Once roasted, remove the beef from the pan and leave to one side to rest for 15 minutes, do not cover with foil!