Grassfed Beef Rump Roast

The last, lonely cut of beef from our 2010 mixed quarter from Lubbers Farm became tonight’s dinner: Rump Roast. One of my favorite recipes for rump roast is a Tuscan version that I learned at Chef Claudio’s cooking class near Florence, Italy, but tonight I opted for a different approach: Oven Rump Roast from Cooks.com.

As always with grassfed beef, it’s important to be conservative with the cook time because grassfed meat is leaner than factory farmed so it cooks quickly. Our cut of meat was 3.28 lbs. so I halved the recipe and reduced the cooking time to one hour and ten minutes.

It’s an easy recipe. You just rub some fresh garlic on the meat and then mix salt, pepper, and dried mustard together, which you rub on the meat before putting it in the oven.

Then you mix together some Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and dry red wine, and baste the meat with it.

While my digital meat thermometer read medium rare when I took the roast out, it looked more like medium after letting the meat rest, covered, for ten minutes.

To accompany the roast, I simply roasted a vegetable medley of Yukon gold potatoes, carrots, celery, and garlic cloves in a skillet with olive oil while the meat cooked at 325 degrees F. When I took the roast out, I bumped up the oven temperature to 375 for another 20 minutes to finish cooking the vegetables.

Yummy, happy, Sunday dinner.

Prime Rib for the Holidays

When you get a mixed quarter of a cow from Lubbers Farm, the butcher asks how you want the ribs—ribeye or prime rib? Bill and I opted for prime rib. Just once a year, I love making roast beef. It’s usually around the holidays…either Christmas Eve or New Year’s. This year, I made it for Christmas Eve.

I followed this recipe from Bon Appetit: Rib Roast with Thyme-Mustard Jus. One reason I picked this recipe is because it’s so easy. I’ve been pretty busy lately and needed some simplicity in my life.

Since we don’t have honey-Dijon mustard, I made my own by combining Grey Poupon Dijon mustard with one teaspoon of unfiltered honey, purchased locally from J & J Bee Service in Gobles, Michigan. (I picked this up earlier in the summer at the Holland Farmers Market.)

You just mix the mustard and honey together with fresh thyme, which I found in my local grocery store. It’s from a farm called Michigan Fine Herbs in Shelby, Michigan, which produces organic herbs.

Then you rub the mustard-honey-thyme marinade on the beef.

Roast the meat for about an hour and 15 minutes. Then let it rest on a platter, covered with foil.

Meanwhile, pour some dry white wine in the roasting pan and deglaze the pan to make the jus. There’s not much grease from this cut of meat because grass-fed beef is much leaner than feedlot meat.

We enjoyed our roast beef with potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, tossed in olive oil with salt and pepper and roasted in the oven along with the meat.

Happy Christmas!