Roast Beef with Twice-Baked Potatoes
current situation: Happy Easter! Give the fam a hug from me!
Easter dinner. A roast, potatoes that have been in the oven twice, and sprouts roasted hard enough that people who say they hate sprouts eat them.
Twice-baked means exactly that: baked whole, scooped out, mashed with butter and sour cream and cheese, piled back into the skins and baked again. The skin is the dish — it goes crisp and holds, and it is why this is worth doing instead of just making mash.
Sprouts get cut in half and laid cut-side down and then left alone. Every one of them should have a flat black face. Stirred sprouts are steamed sprouts and steamed sprouts are why the rumour started.
- Feeds
- 6
- Hands-on
- 1 hour
- In the oven
- About 2 hours
- Occasion
- Any Sunday
What you need
The beef
- 1 beef roast, 4–5 lb — top sirloin or a boneless rib
- 2 tbsp coarse kosher salt, the night before
- 2 tbsp coarse cracked black pepper
- 1 tbsp granulated garlic
- 2 tbsp beef tallow
The twice-baked potatoes
- 6 large russet potatoes
- 6 tbsp butter
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 1 1/2 cups sharp cheddar, grated
- 1/4 cup chives, sliced, plus more on top
- Salt and black pepper
The sprouts
- 2 lb brussels sprouts, halved
- 3 tbsp beef tallow or oil
- Salt and coarse pepper
How it goes
1 — Salt the roast overnight, uncovered
Salt, pepper and garlic all over, on a rack in the fridge, uncovered, overnight. The glaze on the crust in the picture is what a dry surface does under heat.
2 — Potatoes baked whole first, at 425°F
Oiled and salted on the bare rack for an hour, alongside whatever else is going on. Let them cool for fifteen minutes before you cut them or you will burn your hands and tear the skins.
3 — Scoop, mash, fill, and do not over-empty them
Tops cut off, insides scooped out leaving a quarter inch against the skin so it stays rigid. Mashed with butter, sour cream, most of the cheese and the chives, then piled back in higher than the skin.
4 — Sear the roast, then low and slow
Tallow in a screaming roasting pan, every face browned hard. Then 275°F until it reads 128°F in the middle — between an hour and a half and two hours. Go by temperature.
5 — Rest the beef thirty minutes while the oven goes up
Out, tented, resting on the board. Oven back up to 425°F for everything else. This is the window the potatoes and sprouts need and the beef only improves in it.
pro tip — Thirty minutes of rest on a roast this size is not optional. A roast cut at ten minutes empties itself onto the board.
6 — Sprouts cut-side down, untouched
Tossed in tallow, laid flat face down on a hot tray, 425°F for twenty-five minutes without stirring. Black on the cut face, sweet in the middle.
7 — Potatoes back in for twenty minutes
Rest of the cheese on top, into the same oven until the tops are browned and the skins have gone crisp again. Chives over at the end.
8 — Carve thick, into the juices
Across the grain, half an inch, laid straight back into whatever has collected on the board and spooned over.
Happy Easter. Give the fam a hug from me. LFG.