Time to carve the Christmas... beef ? Recipe is one worth celebrating
It’s the malleability of Christmas dinner that can make it so challenging to plan. Which is to say, choice can be intimidating. At Thanksgiving, it’s about the turkey. Valentine’s Day demands chocolate. Easter? Ham or lamb. And Fourth of July is all burgers and dogs all the time. But Christmas doesn’t enjoy a similar food association that presets the menu as happens with so many other holidays. (And Christmas goose doesn’t count because that only happens in Dickens’ novels.) All of which tends to leave us scrambling.
When I was a kid, my mother often did ham. Not because we loved it or it felt special, but because my mother is vegan and it was easy for her to cook. When I was a teenager, we switched to mountains of shrimp with butter. Also easy, and because why not? After I got married, we started eating Italian. Not because we’re Italian, but because pasta and meatballs is a quick and easy meal to assemble in the midst of the gifting and visiting chaos.
It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I finally settled on something that not only was easy, but also felt celebratory. A massive beef roast. Not earth shattering, of course. But for some reason it took nearly 40 years for me to reach this point.
Tender and juicy, a roast feels indulgent. And when treated right, it can pack tons of flavour.
But it also is utterly simple to prepare.
So I’m sharing my Christmas beef roast recipe, which gets intense savory flavours from a rub of fresh rosemary and cracked peppercorns. All you need to do is rub it on the meat, pop it in the oven, then head back to the festivities. This recipe even makes its own side dish – butter-roasted potatoes that bathe in the juices of the meat.