Month: December 2014

The strip loin roast came out pretty near perfect for Christmas. To recap, I started with a 16.5 pound roast that I picked up from Sam’s club. After trimming it, it was probably closer to 15 lbs.

 

The trimmings.

Seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and some lawry’s seasoning salt.

Wrapped it back up and let it sit in the fridge till Christmas morning. I think it got about 36 hours or so to sit in the seasoning. Christmas morning after the kids opened their gifts, onto the grill. Temps were running about 275-325 during the cook. Smoked for about an hour and a half until roast reach 120. Wrapped it up and off to the grandparents.

Roast was finished in the oven at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes.

After resting, the roast got to 140 degrees internal which was a bit higher than I was shooting for, but it came out really well.

Made some au jus to go with it. Had a pan under the roast in the drill with some onion, leeks, garlic, carrots, tomato paste, my homemade beef stock, and some salt and pepper. This was finished on the stove with some corn starch to thicken it just a bit and a dash of worcestershire sauce. No pics.

Save-a-lot ran an add this week for a Rib Roast for $4.99 per lb. Thought I would check it out and see if I could find a decent one to do as a practice roast this week in preparation for next week. I think they had two in the case. One was about 3 lbs but had zero marbling so I decided to pass. They also had some eye of the round at a decent price so I picked up one that was about 3.5 lbs. Seasoned it last night with salt, pepper, and Olde Thompson steak and burger seasoning, then vac sealed it. I will be cooking this either tonight or tomorrow.

 

I always wanted to try this french dip au jus, so picked it up with some cheap beef broth.

There is a lot of sodium here. For Christmas I will be using my beef stock and adjust the ingredients if I like the flavor profile of this concoction.

 

Also here is this year’s Christmas tree.

 

 

Update – Cooked the roast last night. First thing, the Au Jus was not good. Had a heavy soy sauce taste that was off putting. I made it per instructions. After I tried to dilute it with the beef broth and some shallots to try to even out the taste, but it was a lost cause. It got dumped.

The roast I smoked until internal was 135. Temperature started around 340 and I just let it ride out without adding any more wood. Towards the end it was running at 260 or so. I did not time it. The flavor was very good and I would say it came out about medium after resting. The roast was in the vacuum pack with the seasoning for almost 48 hours which I think helped with the flavor.