How to Cook a Tender Eye of Round Beef Roast

Learn how you can take a lean, cheap roast and turn it into a delicious dinner. Get my cook it slow and make it tender eye of round roast recipe! When cooked well it can be a poor man's prime rib.

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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. First I needed some more information. Let me share with you what my research found and then I will show you how to cook a good roast.

Jump to:

• 👁️ What is the Eye of Round Roast?
• 🛒 Ingredients
• 📋 Instructions
• 🔪 How to Serve
• 🥔 What to Serve With It
• 🥪 Leftovers
• Slow Roasted Eye of Round

👁️ What is the Eye of Round Roast?

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 but it can be flavorful.

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 a game plan.

RELATED - Learn about What a Bottom Round Roast Is

🛒 Ingredients

First you need to get your eye of round from the store. You can do like I did and buy a large eye of round round to cut into smaller roasts or some steaks as well. Or just look or a 3 pound roast. The roasts are pretty cheap, often under $5 a pound. They are on my list of beef roasts at Costco

Nowadays whenever you can get beef at that price it's a good deal as long as you know what to do with it - which is probably why you are reading this now.

Once you got your beef you want to season it up with a spice rub. You can use whatever your tastes desires. Let me show you what I use:

• 1 tablespoon kosher salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon coriander seed
• 1 teaspoon celery seed
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon ground mustard

When I can I always use whole spices. They have more flavor than pre-ground.

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). If you don't have one then use a mortal & pestle.

Take this spice rub and rub it into the meat, all over the entire roast. If you find you need more just keep the portions the same.

📋 Instructions

Set your oven to 225 degrees. We are going to start low, so that the outside doesn't become leather before the inside is done. Be patient and taking longer to cook the roast will reap big benefits in the end.

It would also help if you bring the roast closer to room temperature before you begin hitting with the heat. Set it out about 30 minutes before it's cook time.

Place the roast onto a roasting pan or sheet pan. Before you put it into the oven we have to talk about an essential tool. For me it's the DOT® Simple Alarm Thermometer

The most important tool to have to cook this roast is a thermometer. Giving you a time would be a disservice as there are too many variables to give you an accurate time. Best I can say is that you need to give yourself 2-3 hours. Without a thermometer you can easily overcook this roast and it will be too tough to chew. You need to monitor the roast while it cooks and the best thing for that is an alarm thermometer with a probe.

If you just have an instant read thermometer you can use that but you will have to open up the oven several times to check the temperature and every time you do that heat escapes and thus increasing the time it will take to cook your roast.

Stick the probe into the center of the meat into the deepest part. Because the roasts are boneless you don't have to worry about hitting bone and messing up your reading.

Learn about Why You Should Have a Thermometer for Your Cooking.

Now once your thermometer is in place, stick your roast into the pre-heated 225 degree oven.

Keep in in there until the internal temperature is about 15-20 degrees away from your desire doneness

• Medium rare is 130-140
• Medium is 140-150
• Well Done is the toughest jerky you could imagine

Remove the roast from the oven.

Then raise the temperature to 500 degrees, this will help give your roast a nice crust. It's not going to be very browned at this point. Keep in mind that while the roast is sitting out it will continue to cook or "carry over". This will also give you a chance to add a little more flavor in the form of rosemary butter.

I take a sticker of butter, softened it and add in chopped fresh rosemary. Then I put the butter into the freezer to get hard. I want it frozen when I put it on the meat so that is will melt and run down meat without it just falling off the meat as it would if the butter was already melted.

When the oven hits 500 and you put your butter on your roast then put it back in and keep it in there until your 5-8 degrees away from your final desire temperature. Carryover heat will take it the rest of the way.

🔪 How to Serve

At this point there are two things you can do to make this roast as tender in your mouth as possible

• Slice thin on the cutting board
• Cut it against the grain on your plate

It's best to serve this roast carved thinly. Use your best knife. If you have an electric knife even better. But before you do that give time for the roast to rest, at least 15 after pulling it from the oven. 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.

I like to serve it with some freshly cracker black pepper and a couple drops of Worcestershire sauce.

🥔 What to Serve With It

Beef and potatoes are always welcomed together. You could make mashed potatoes, I have a recipe for mixed mashed potatoes that takes different color potatoes and swirls them together which makes for a stunning side dish.

If you really felt like a baked potato but not sure how to pull it off when you are cooking the beef at a temperature too low for potato, you can use your air fryer to make a baked potato.

For a green veggie, you can't go wrong with simple steamed green beans served with a high quality butter like Kerrygold.

🥪 Leftovers

Reheating the leftovers can be tricky. You don't want to just microwave it as it will get tough.

What you can do is throw it in the last second in a soup or a bowl of ramen. Or do what I did and chopped into small pieces and added it to some fried rice when it was ready and off the heat. There was enough heat in the rice to warm up the beef just enough.

You also can wrap it tightly in foil and put it in your air fryer at 350 for a minute or two until warmed. We did that when we were serving leftovers on a sandwich.