Recipe: Best Roast Beef

Best Roast Beef
Recipe courtesy Jamie Oliver

1 (5 1/2-pound) fore-rib, wing-rib or sirloin of beef, French trimmed (2.5 kilograms)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
red onions, halved
2 bulbs garlic, plus 4 cloves garlic, peeled
7 pounds (3 kilograms) roasting potatoes, peeled
3 rosemary sprigs
2 thumb-sized pieces ginger, peeled and diced
1/2 bottle robust red wine

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C), and heat a large thick-bottomed roasting tray on the stovetop. Rub the beef generously with salt, then add a little olive oil to the tray and lightly color the meat for a couple of minutes on all sides. Lay the onions and bulbs of garlic in the tray with the beef on top of them, then cook in the pre-heated oven for a total of 1 1/2 hours. While the beef is roasting, parboil your potatoes in salted boiling water for around 10 minutes and drain in a colander. Toss about to chuff them up, this will make them really crispy. After 30 minutes, take the tray out and toss in your potatoes and rosemary. With a garlic press or grater, squeeze or grate the cloves of garlic and ginger over everything in the tray.

Shake the tray and whack it back in the oven for the final hour. Remove the potatoes to a dish to keep warm, place the beef on a plate, covered with foil, to rest, and get your greens. Remove most of the fat from your roasting tray and you should be left with caramelized onions and sticky beef goodness. Add 1 teaspoon of flour to the tray and mash everything together. Heat the tray on the stovetop and when hot, add the red wine. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes, until your gravy is really tasty and coats back of a spoon. Add any juice from the beef and feel free to add some water or stock to thin the gravy if you like. Pour through a coarse sieve and push it through with a spoon, pushing it through with a spoon, and serve in a warmed gravy jug.