Throwback Thursday: Beef silverside pot roast with rich onion gravy

I was thinking about all the people who love meat, but like it well done, even their well-aged steak or lamb chop, with the usual thoughts tumbling through my mind. Chiefly: Why?!

I’ve always found it puzzling, because with a medium rare steak (and chop) you’re almost guaranteed that it will be perfectly tender. Its texture is better, and its flavour. Whereas, well done and you can be pretty certain that it’s going to be tough. With luck, and in the hands of a skilled chef, you might be fortunate enough for it to turn out reasonably tender, though it will never be as good as a tender medium rare sirloin or fillet.

The most maddening of steak cuts is the T-bone, beloved of so many, and that always puzzles me. It’s almost impossible to cook it evenly, because it’s a piece of meat at odds with itself: it’s sirloin on one side, and on the smaller side is fillet. Because it’s only a narrow amount of fillet, that part is going to be overcooked by the time the sirloin side is medium rare. One answer is to cook the sirloin part of it rare, and hope for the best with the bit of fillet, but not everyone likes that.

With a beef pot roast in mind, I chose the cut that is often used to make biltong: silverside. It has a lovely fat cap, and is from the hind quarter with the rump on one side and the leg on the other. It’s a big, thick cut that’s very lean other than that fat cap, and the flesh is quite coarse and not suitable for a steak unless it is to be braised, say with onions.

The cooking starts on the stove top and then moves to the oven. The ingredients are classic: onion, carrot, celery, leek, bay, thyme. Those ingredients collect in thousands of recipes for a reason: they work together.

And rounding the dish magnificently is to finish it with an onion sauce. The cooking stock is reduced to a gravy, with lots of sautéed onions. 

A very happy result.

And we could all use a very happy result right now.

Tony’s beef silverside pot roast with onion gravy

(Serves 6-8)

Ingredients

3 Tbsp cooking oil (it doesn’t have to be olive, I am cutting back because of the ridiculous prices)

1.4 kg hunk of beef silverside

2 large onions, roughly chopped

5 carrots, peeled and sliced thickly

2 celery stalks, diced

2 large leeks, sliced

3 Tbsp cornflour

200 ml dry white wine

1.5 litres good beef stock (I used Nomu liquid stock, diluted to the packet ratios)

3 bay leaves

4 thyme sprigs

Salt and black pepper (be generous)

For the sauce:

2 Tbsp cooking oil

3 large onions, sliced

The reduced cooking stock, strained

2 thyme sprigs

Salt and black pepper to taste if needed (taste it first, there was salt and pepper in the pot so it might not need more)

Method

Season the beef all over with salt. You can do this an hour ahead, and also make sure the joint is not fridge-cold when you start cooking.

Preheat the oven to 200℃.

Heat the oil in a big, heavy pot (I used my old Dutch oven) and brown the beef well on all sides on a moderate heat (not too low though or the meat will bleed). There’s no need to rush this, it should take about 10 minutes to be well browned. Remove the beef to a plate.

Add a little more oil, heat, and cook the onions for two or three minutes, stirring. Add the carrots, celery and leeks, and continue cooking and stirring for about five minutes.

Sprinkle the cornflour over and stir it in.

Add the white wine and cook, stirring now and then, until it has reduced by half.

Add the beef stock, bay leaves and thyme, and season. Give it a stir. Bring it to a boil, and turn the heat off. Put the beef back in the pot and put the lid on.

Put it in the 200℃ oven. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 170℃ or 180℃ (or start at 170℃ and turn up to 180℃ later) and cook for about two hours or until the beef is tender. Being silverside, it will not be as tender as a perfect medium rare steak, but the texture was very pleasant and the flavour great.

Best of all is the onion gravy that goes with it. For this, first spoon off any fat from the pot (there shouldn’t be a lot). 

Pour the stock into a large jug or bowl, through a sieve or colander. Keep the remaining vegetables to serve with the beef. They will be a bit mushy but they’ll taste great and it would be silly to waste them.

Slice the three onions. Heat 2 Tbsp cooking oil in a suitable heavy pan and cook the onions gently, with the thyme sprigs, for about 15 minutes, to develop their sweet allium flavours. Remove the thyme.

Add the strained cooking stock and reduce until you have plenty of good, well flavoured sauce. Taste as you go and stop cooking when it tastes wonderful.

Serve slices of your beef pot roast with a generous quantity of that lovely onion sauce and the vegetables from the pot alongside. I’d recommend mashed potato as the perfect accompaniment. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.