Slow Beef Roast

This is a bit of a leap of faith but, it is the best way to cook a roast.

I'm using a Rack of Ribeye, the best cut of beef there is!

I like to bring mine slowly to 55-59°C (131-138°F). At that temperature the Beef is Medium done.

At 60°C (140°F) the collagen fibres shrink and potentially squeeze out a lot of moisture, so I’m always aiming to minimise that! The slower the heat penetrates the meat, the less tension in the meat fibres, so the less risk of it squeezing out the moisture.

The fats begin rendering and lubricating the meat at 45°C (113°F). I want to take it to the point where the meat juices are released and the fats are rendered, so it is as moist as it can be.

To do this I bring the heat into the meat as slowly as I can.

Rack of Ribeye

Charcoal BBQ with Lid

Temperature Probe

Salt and Pepper

Blow Torch

Not the cheapest cut but, not the most expensive either. as a roast you will get good yield from this, you will feed a dinner party of 6 easily.

I just use a mix of 50/50 salt and pepper to season Beef, I want the flavour of the Beef to shine.

Sprinkle the roast with the salt and pepper mix.

So, this is my fantastic Stainless Steel BBQ, as you can see I have spared no effort to make sure I'm using state of the art equipment.

I’ll be running it at between 85°C and 120°C (185-248°F) and I expect it to take a good part of the day to cook the Ribye Roast.

This is an important step. We will be running the BBQ at a low temperature, too low for it to brown the meat, so we need to do that first and the blow torch is the easiest way.

Yes I’ll burn some of the pepper like this but I’m not concerned by that, there is not a lot of rub on it and I’m more interested in good “Plate Colour”. Make sure to brown all sides!

As this is going to be the final look of the beef, make sure you get a nice "Plate Colour" this means a colour that you are happy to serve your guests.

Temperature is the most important thing in this cook.

We want to know the temperature in the "Oven" as well as in the meat.

I'm using a Digital temperature monitor for this, I can have one probe in the meat and one clipped to the grill to show me the temperature of the cooking chamber. This one is controlled by my phone.

To control the temperature in the cooking chamber I'm dropping lit charcoal down one side of the BBQ, the amount of fuel I have in here dictates the temperature.

While the lid is up, the fuel gets all the air it needs so be careful!

After an hour or so, the fuel will burn away so I'll need to add more fuel, m temperature probe will tell me when.

I'm wanting to maintain between 85°C and 120°C (185-248°F)

Now we just watch and wait.

What I like about this aside from the stunning roast beef at the end is that it is a completely stress-free cook, there is no risk of overheating, it will just cruise along minding its own business while you get on with something else or catch a little nap!

You only need to maintain temperature in the cooking chamber, and the alarm on the probe will tell me if I need to look at it, so an ideal time to catch up on those few episodes of Star Trek!

After 6 or 7 hours the meat will come to the desired "Doneness" temperature.

In this case the meat is 60°C (140°F)

At that temperature the cellular structure is still intact, this is another advantage of this method, no need to rest! The meat is under no tension and will not squeeze out the juices when it is cut!

You can see that here, this was pulled straight from the BBQ and sliced less than a minute later and there is no lost moisture on the cutting board!