Not all parts of beef are suitable for baking in the oven. Immediately it is better to choose the boneless option (the exception is the ribs, of course they must be cooked with bone, this is the most relish). To determine whether a particular part is suitable or not, you can imagine a beef carcass: the muscles that had the least load during the movement of the animal have less coarse connective tissue, respectively, when baked in the oven, they are the most soft and juicy. More than others, a thick or thin edge, as well as a tenderloin, are recommended for this cooking method. In the absence of the opportunity to purchase just them, you can bake the ribs - believe me, it will turn out no less tasty.
Pick your recipe
You will need
- - Beef;
- - ginger;
- - garlic;
- - salt;
- - honey, cane sugar, molasses;
- - spices;
- - Red wine;
- - lemon juice;
- - potato or corn starch;
- - knives;
- - cutting board;
- - bowls;
- - foil or sleeve for baking;
- - a baking sheet or pan;
- - oven.
Instruction manual
1
If you want to bake a whole piece of beef, the best choice for you is tenderloin. It is not all the same: there is a "head", "body" and a "tail". For your purposes, it is advisable to buy a piece consisting of the first two. The fact is that they are all unequal in thickness, respectively, have different cooking times. You can achieve the quality of the finished dish only if you circumvent this nuance. There are people who believe that giving preference to ordinary, rather than marbled beef, it is impossible to get tasty, melted baked meat in the mouth. Well, in vain. The tenderloin is exactly the part where the marble streaks are the least contained. By and large, you choose marble or ordinary - in this case, almost nothing changes. But what the goby ate during life changes, and how.
2
Try at least once to find a tenderloin from animal grass feeding - definitely, you will feel the difference. Such meat has a much brighter and fuller flavor that can never be achieved with grain feeding. Another factor you should know when choosing beef for baking in the oven is whether the carcass has passed the necessary fermentation. All these tales about the quality of fresh meat - just that tales. They do not have any technological background. Even more - fresh meat can only boast of softness, neither disclosure of taste, nor a set of proper aroma should be expected from it. For them to appear in beef, it needs to mature. In the West, the carcass will hang up to 14 days at a temperature close to zero degrees. We have less time - but experts who really know a lot about good steaks, ribs and tenderloins will rarely finish fermentation before 5 days.
3
Even, probably, it’s not so important what you buy: a tenderloin, or maybe a thin or thick edge, as it is important, having brought home, correctly prepare the beef for baking in the oven. Be sure to rinse and dry the piece you are going to cook. With rare exceptions, this must always be done for basic hygiene reasons. It is worthwhile to dry it with either a waffle or a paper towel, it is better not to use the other, the villi may leave fibers on it. Further preparation is reduced to applying notches. Take a knife with a very sharp blade and cover the entire piece with a "net", cutting the thickness of the meat by 2-3 mm, first in one direction, then in the other. Such an operation will help to better stick to the coating, with which we will cover the surface of the piece. If you decide to bake in a foil or sleeve - instead of a notch, it is better to make incisions in the thickness of the product. It is important to use a knife with a narrow long blade, the task is to get almost to the middle. Such cuts are needed for more uniform salting out and in order to season spices in them.
4
A good result awaits you if you do the pre-salting. It can be dry, mixed and wet. The first option allows the finished dish to get a tightly knocked down structure, the second - the medium in softness, the third - to achieve the effect that the phrase best describes: "you can eat beef with one lips." For dry salting, for each kilogram of meat, take 10 g of coarse salt, 3 g of freshly crushed black pepper, 1 g of crushed allspice, bay leaf, clove buds. This is a basic recipe. For mixed salting, put 5 g of salt, and dissolve 7 g in 50 ml of water. For wet - 15 g of salt, dilute the whole composition with 100 ml of liquid (here, instead of water, red wine or lemon juice is appropriate, pour a glass of cognac in the last). After pre-salting, leave the beef for baking for a day in the refrigerator.
5
Decide how you will cook the meat in the oven - just placing it on a baking sheet, or maybe in a foil or sleeve. The first method guarantees the formation of a crust, the other two contribute to a more uniform baking throughout the entire thickness of the product. After choosing “without everything” baking, prepare the ingredients for coating. There can be many options, it is important to understand the basic principle of preparing such mixtures: they must have a caramelizing ingredient (honey, molasses, cane sugar), a binder (potato or corn starch), taste-forming (chopped ginger root, garlic cloves, passed through a press, grained mustard, spices) and fat (vegetable oil). Place the beef in the oven, keep it almost until cooked over medium heat, then remove it, thickly coat with the prepared mixture, return it to the oven and bake until the end. The total cooking time is 1 hour for each kilogram of tenderloin, a thin or thick edge (other parts of the beef bake longer). The recommended temperature is 150-180 degrees.
6
Cook the meat in foil or sleeve for about the same time. Shortly before the end of baking, cut the covering material with sharp scissors approximately in the middle of the top edge. Bend the sides, but be extremely careful - hot air will surely burst out of them, so protect your hands and face from burns. It is necessary to open the beef so that it acquires a beautiful color. If the cooking time is up, and the color remains the same, pour meat 1-2 tbsp. l vegetable oil and crust certainly tinted. Serving baked meat in the oven can be both cold and hot. In the first case, it is worth serving with horseradish or Dijon mustard, in the second - one of the varieties of demiglas, gravy prepared from saturated beef broth, condensed for many hours boiling.
note
Do not keep beef in the oven for longer than the recommended time. You risk getting dry meat.
Useful advice
For baking in the oven, beef tenderloin, a thin or thick edge, is ideal.
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