Eye of Round


 

John Bridgman

TVWBB Super Fan
Eye of Round was on for $2 a pound yesterday, and the weather was nice, so I picked one up on the way home (I was in a hurry or would have got more ;)). I was planning to try cooking it "Italian Beef" style on the Performer but while looking for ideas I ran across Mrs. O'Leary's Cow Crust at amazingribs.com and figured I'd try that:

http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/rubs_pastes_marinades_and_brines/cow_crust.html

The cooking instructions on a nearby page (which I can't find right now) were intended for fattier cuts of meat than eye of round, but they lined up pretty well with what seemed to be "best practices" for the cut -- cook slowly to rare or medium rare, either by starting in a hot oven then sitting for a couple of hours with heat off, or by starting at low temp then searing at the end. I figured I would try start low / reverse sear on the WSM.

Rubbed and in the fridge waiting for tomorrow :
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After being on the smoker for 30 mins at 250-ish dome temp :
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Reached ~110 after 1-1/4 hrs, searing on coals :
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After searing internal temp was around 120, let it rest before slicing :
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Internal temp didn't get much over 125, but that seemed to be in some people's range for medium-rare so cut open ready for slicing :
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More rare than I like but not too much so, figured I'd slice this chunk and put the rest back on the smoker for another 15 mins :
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Came out pretty good, particularly the thinner slices (I was playing with thickness) :
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Another pic without flash to show colour more accurately :
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Off to slice up the rest then it's Sandwich Time.
 
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Thanks guys.

You're sure it's not too rare ? I was raised on good British cooking, which generally aims for a slightly brownish shade of grey.

Might be sacrilege, but while I put most of the sliced beef away as-is I did run some onions through the meat slicer (hey it was already a mess), fried 'em up with some garlic and a smallish scotch bonnet, then made about 2 cups of thin beefy gravy. Turned off the heat, added some of the most frighteningly rare beef slices, and let them sit until the beef juices had mixed into the gravy, the gravy was mostly absorbed back into the beef, and the beef had moved a tiny bit closer to the Flat Dark Earth colour I normally expect from my beef.

Probably shouldn't have done it (I had some kind of sausage gravy voice going in my head at the time) but I'm still trying things for the first time so what the heck. The gravy thing worked out pretty well -- made it tastier and moved it to more like medium rare without any apparent increase in toughness. I guess that tells me I should have cooked it to medium-rare in the first place, oh well.

Next time I would definitely skip the flour and aim for some kind of fake au jus. Anyways, other than slicing it a bit too thick I'm really happy with how this turned out.

If FreshCo still has any in stock, maybe we'll do Italian Beef on the Performer tomorrow ;)
 
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That looks perfect to me, too. Then again, you're the one that's eating it.

I hope you filled up your freezer at $2/lb. You can make all kinds of great lunchmeats with that, in addition to outstanding roast beef. Think pastrami, corned beef, etc.
 
Looks about perfect to me, John. Great job!

Best to err on the underdone side, as that can be easily remedied, but not vice versa.

I just did a roast using the Italian beef recipe from amazing ribs. It turned out great.
 
i'm agreeing with everyone above, looks GREAT! actually... perfect was used quite often, so I'll go with that too ;)
GREAT & PERFECT!
i'll eet that today, tomorrow, the next day and all the others that follow.

John, nice, VERY nice cookin'!
 

 

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