From My Kitchen

When it comes to a roast, all my family actually cares about are Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and gravy (and maybe fling some pigs in blankets in there too). Consequently we have Yorkshires with roast chicken, pork and lamb as well as beef because life’s too short not to. This time around it was beef, and these recipes work brilliantly – the cooking the beef this way resulted in amazing gravy. Serves 4 easily, results in leftovers too!

Ingredients

Beef:

1kg beef joint

1 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 onion, cut into wedges

500g carrots, halved along length

Yorkshire puddings (makes 12):

150g plain flour

2 large eggs

150ml milk

100ml water

Salt & pepper

veg oil

Gravy:

3 beef stock cubes

A good slurp of red wine

Method

1. Make your Yorkshire batter by beating together the pudding ingredients (not the oil!) in a jug with plenty of seasoning. Leave in the fridge to chill.
2. Roast Beef:
3. Heat oven to 220C.
4. Put the onion wedges and carrots in the centre of a roasting tin, mix the flour and mustard together with some seasoning and rub over the meat, and place it on the veg.
5. Roast for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 190C and roast for a further 40 mins for medium, 30 mins for rare.
6. Remove from the oven, cover in tin foil and leave to rest for 30 mins or more. You’re going to have hot gravy at the end, that’ll help if it cools too much. Slice when ready to eat.
7. DO NOT WASH UP THE ROASTING TIN. That’s really important.
8. Yorkshire puddings:
9. Turn the oven back up to 220C.
10. Put a scant tsp of oil in each hole of a 12 hole muffin tin, wipe the oil up the sides of each hole and chuck it in the oven to heat up for 10 mins.
11. Carefully remove the tin from the oven, and quickly half fill each hole with the Yorkshire batter from the fridge – get it back in the oven ASAP and leave it alone for 25 mins until puffed up and glorious.
12. Gravy:
13. Remove the carrots from the roasting tin to serve when you’re ready, pop the tin on your hob over a medium heat and pour in a good slug of red wine. If you’re wondering about the onions, they will largely have disintegrated so will just add to the gravy flavour. Nice.
14. As the gravy begins to bubble, use a wooden spatula to start scraping up all the bits of sticky beefiness/onion/caramelised carrot that’s stuck in the tin.
15. Pour in a couple of cups of boiling water (or the cooking water from any additional veg you have on the go), and crumble in the stock cubes.
16. Keep stirring and allow to bubble away until you’re ready to eat. If it gets too thick then add in more hot water, if not thick enough for your liking then mix 1 tsp cornflour with a little cold water, fling it in and stir and stir and stir until the gravy thickens and loses the cloudiness that the cornflour adds.
17. Serve up, enjoy the fruits of your labour, then collapse in a heap on the sofa and pat your full happy tummy.