Eye of Round Roast

If you are looking for how to cook an eye of round steak, check out this post.

Last week I found an entire boneless eye of round roast at a local grocery store. So this week, I had to decide what to do with it. But first I needed some more information. What I found is that the eye of round of course comes from the round portion of the cow (yes that's the backside!). This area also contains the top round and bottom round. The eye of round is a cylinder shaped cut of beef. It is lean in that there is only some fat on the outside and very little marbling on the inside. It is not the most tender piece of meat because that part of the cow does get a workout. So keeping in mind all this knowledge and after cutting my whole eye of round into about a 3-lb roast for that night's dinner, I came up with the following recipe:

Instructions

Set your oven to 200 degrees. We are going to start low, so that the outside doesn't become leather before the inside is done. Take your roast and liberally season it with kosher salt. Then to make a flavorful crust, use the following spice rub.

Ingredients for Spice Rub

1 teaspoon coriander seed

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds

1 teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon ground mustard

Place all of these in your spice grinder (coffee grinder) and grind them for 10-15 seconds. (To learn more about using a coffee grinder to grind spices, read this post). Take this spice rub and rub it into the meat, all over the entire roast. If you wish to make more of the rub just keep the portions the same.

How to Cook It

Now that your meat is ready to meet the heat, place it on a roasting pan. Then stick a probe thermometer into the center of the meat on an angle. If you don't have one it will be hard to determine your roast is done. Some will try to tell you to cook it for 7 minutes per pound but I don't buy into that, as there is no way those kind of calculations can take into effect the shape of the roast. Now once your thermometer is in place, stick your roast into the pre-heated 200 degree oven. Keep in in there until the temperature is about 15-20 degrees away from your desire doneness (medium rare is 130-145, medium is 145-155, ff you want it above medium, than you also want to look like your a cow chewing its cud). Remove the roast from the oven and cover it with foil. Then raise the temperature to 500 degrees, this will help give your roast a nice crust. Keep in mind that while the roast is sitting out it will continue to cook or "carry over". When the oven hits 500, put your roast back in and keep it in there until your 5 degrees away from your final desire temperature.

Serving

It's best to serve this roast, carved thinly with an electric knife. But before you do that give time for the roast to rest, at least 10 minutes, 20 would be better. Use foil to keep it warm. When you eat it make sure to cut it against the grain so that it will be easiest to chew.