Slow roast rib of beef

It's Mothering Sunday. Traditionally the day when men relieve their wives of cookery duties and cremate a poorly chosen piece of silverside, serving with greasy roasties, overdone vegetables and lumpy gravy. Pudding would be a step too far.

As the person in our household most likely to be found in the kitchen, I am well used to Sunday roasting duties so what does one do to go that extra mile?

I was in my favorite butchers, David Jon on Stanley Street in Bedford. Looking for something extra special I eyed up a nice piece of sirloin for a roast. However I was advised against in favour of a beautiful, four week hung pice of rib. This was duly french trimmed in the most beautiful fashion and presented to the scales weighing in at just over 3 kg. He kindly gave me some nice bones to add to the tray for extra flavour, the sort of service a lot of butchers don't offer.

So what to do with this fine piece of meat. I had previously thought of doing a "sous vide" sirloin but I couldn't really imagine bones being beneficially treated in a waterbath so roasting it had to be. However, I did want to get that slow cooked, pink throughout quality. Slow roast it had to be.

I did a bit of searching for temperatures and times and the general concensus seemed to be around 4 hours at 75 degrees with regular checking with a meat thermometer. Beef is best when cooked to between 53 and 55 degrees internally. This temperature should slowly raise the joint to this magic point without the risk of any of it over cooking.

Bones were scattered around the bottom of the roasting tray along with a few extras for flavour: Carrots, garlic, onion etc. I then made a simple rub of salt, pepper, bay leaves, rosemary and tyme. This was massaged into the meat along with some olive oil and I occasionally pressed some of the herbs into any available crevices in order to infuse some of these lovely flavours deep inside the meat.

Rather than going straight into the oven, the joint is now sitting in the tray, having a few hours to get to room temperature before roasting. The "slow" can't start too early: Slow grown beef, aged for a long period, prepared and butchered with care and attention, slowly brought to room temperature, slowly roasted then rested gently before serving. I'll be popping it into the oven shortly and will report back soon...but not too soon...