Roast Beef

Haven't done them in the smokette (others have) but I do them low and slow on a weber kettle, indirect. key is to take them off at a med or med-rare temp... not to cook them up like brisket or butts. So, you need to pull them out around 125-130 internal, since they will rest and continue to climb 5-10 degrees. Love the rib roast with salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme forming a crust.

This might not be what you're thinkin' of, but it made fine sandwiches and keeps well:

Inject a bottom round or eye of round with a mild curing solution. Rub with coarse white pepper. Cure for about 3-4 days. Drain off any solution. Wrap in a sheet of cooking parchment and tie with string - sort of like you would wrap in butcher paper. Smoke at 175F to internal temp of 150F with your choice of wood. Chill & slice very thin.

The parchment seems to prevent drying out, yet lets a lot of smoke thru. I have the exact recipe for the curing solution on a notepad at home. Let me know if interested.

tjr,
deffinatly interested in the cure solution if you have time to post. I love the eye of rounds, around here they are a decent price and make good jerky as well as steakburgers.
thanks

Will do tomorrow. What's a steakburger? Like Steak & Shake?

Meijer had whole choice eyes-of-round for $1.29/lb at their Super Saturday sale a couple weeks back. Can hardly go wrong at that price.

Just my $.02 worth, I've smoked both large top rounds and bottom rounds and they come out great, just remember to take them out at 120-125* they will climb another 5-10*.

125? isn't that in the rare stage? Could that be healthy?

I though about pulling at like 145 - 150 to ger rare to meduim rare. Am I wrong?

Are those rounds the ones that standard shopping stores use for roast beef?

To me, and others may disagree and probably will, 145-150F will make the center about medium. To me, again, the trick is to get the very inside done enough without overcooking or drying out the outside. Low cooking temperature and wrapping in parchment, especially since there's pretty limited fat on the outside of these cuts, seem to do the trick.

At least some of the deli roast beef is roasted whole top round - maybe that's why bottom round has been a lot cheaper than top.
As to safety, see some USDA FSIS guidelines on killing bacteria

I'm no expert, but it looks to me like if I was selling cooked roast beef it'd basically have to be held at 130F for at least 2 hours or be cooked to 145F to meet USDA requirements (or variations between those points). With luck, maybe we'll get an expert opinion here.

I have smoked 18-20lb roasts to a temp of 150* before and they were dried out and very dark, todays meats are very lean and bacterial contamination from the outside of a roast is very rare. I may have been a little low on my pull-out temp but I slice at 130*-135* after resting and it comes out perfect, I'm comfortable with rare to med rare meats. We are getting some good responses on this issue.

tjr,

Maybe I'm not understanding something. You wrap in in Parchment and THEN smoke it? Why? Don't think the smoke will really penetrate the paper, although you say it does. I've just heard others attempting this on other cuts and the smoke doesn't penetrate. But sounds good if it works.

And I've got to ask about curing solution for beef. Haven't heard many people curing beef at all, so I'm interested in some more details about that. Is it a cure or a marinade?

Thanks to all of you! And tjr, I would be interested in the cure also......Don

tjr ask "What's a steakburger? Like Steak & Shake?"

Well around here I get eye of round for about $2.00/lb.

Steakburgers to me are slices cut across the grain and marinated in your favorite whatever and grilled then built upon a bun with favorite toppings. Mine happen to be cheese, pickles, onion, and mustard. When the tomatoes are fresh from the garden a big slab on top of it all.

I'd have to say it's what dreams are made of. but that is just my opinion.

Here's the mild cure I use:

For 2lb meat:

3 oz room temperature water
1 tsp phosphate (optional - I use Con Yeager Curaphos, their product 1287)
1/8 tsp sodium erythorbate (also optional, also from Con Yeager)
1/2 tsp pink curing salt: 6.25% nitrite
1 Tbsp kosher salt
2Tbsp dextrose or sugar

Measure water, stir in each of the other ingredients in the order listed. Inject meat. Rub with spices if desired. Cure in fridge 3-5 days.

You can easily multiply the quantities. The last round I did weighed 4lb, so I just doubled up. I've used the same cure for turkey breast and pork loin. Turkey was OK, pork loin could have used more salt. I developed the recipe based on some formulas for much larger quantities I found on a university web site as I remember.

As to the parchment, it definitely lets smoke flavor through. I used Reynold's Parchment Paper from the grocery store and soaked it in water for a few minutes to make it easier to get a tight fit. It does absorb a little bit of water. Maybe the more common Quilon coated parchment works different - I haven't tried it.

This method started because my wife really likes Carl Buddig beef lunchmeat, the thin sliced stuff in the little packages. Now that's chopped, formed, etc, etc. So I thought maybe I could do something similar and even better with whole beef. I tried smoking with no covering, but the outside of my beef got too dry and hard to get thin, even slices by the time the center was done enough.

My reasoning was that fibrous sausage casing lets smoke through but holds in at least some moisture, and it's kind of the same thing sort of as parchment. So I tried it. The parchment winds up very wet at the end. The beef has only a thin (maybe 1/16") slightly tougher, darker outside layer and slices easily when cold.

tjr,

Sounds like a good plan, I'll have to give it a try, and I'm always open to new things and ideas. Appreciate all the detail.

Smokin'