Ultimate Roast Beef Rolls (It’s all about the extras!)
I had some friends coming over to watch the Rugby World Cup, and due to Englands less than stellar performance I was glad these beef rolls turned out so well or it could have got ugly!
As I was keen to watch the rugby I decided to do some food where all the preparation was done in advance so I could simply assemble when we were ready to eat.
I got a joint of topside, seasoned it then vacuum sealed it and placed it in my sous vide bath at 57c (for medium rare) and forgot about it. You can do the same in an oven obviously!
As with any good sandwich the secret is all in the sauces and the extras you can cram in to add extra flavours. To start with I thought I’d make a flavoured butter to spread on the rolls, a few weeks before I had made Cafe de Paris butter from Tim Haywards excellent book The DIY Cook, to have on a steak and thought it would be the perfect start. You can find variations of the recipe online but I recommend buying the book as there are so many other great things in it!
Next I caramalised some onions and grilled some romano peppers.
The last thing I thought to add was some homemade aioli, I’d never made it from scratch before but used this recipe http://www.cookitsimply.com/recipe-0010-0f1302.html and found the addition of the bread made for a great texture. It was dead easy and I just used a whisk.
When it was clear that all hope was lost for England in the rugby I fished the beef from the bath and took my frustrations out on the carving board ( after running a blowtorch over the meat to produce a little char).
As you can see the beef was a perfect medium rare all the way through. Now it was a case of trying to cram everything into the buns. I just about managed it.
The combination of flavours was pretty awesome and a small comfort after the rugby!
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