How To Roast Beef

See the directions for roasting meat.

Beef Steak

The best slices are cut from the rump, or through the sirloin.

The found is seldom tender enough, and is very good cooked in other ways. Do not cut your slices very thick. Have the gridiron perfectly clean. Set it over moderately hot coals at first, and turn the steaks in less than a minute. Turn them repeatedly. If the fat makes a blaze under the gridiron, put it out by sprinkling fine salt on it. Steaks will broil in about seven minutes. Have ready a hot dish, and sprinkle each piece with salt, and a little pepper; lay on small pieces of butter, and cover close. This is a much better way than to melt the butter in the dish before taking up the meat. Some persons keep a small pair of tongs on purpose to turn beef-steaks, as using a fork wastes the juice. Steaks should be served hot as possible.

Stuffed Beef Steak

Take a thick and tender slice of rump, of about two pounds weight; make two gills of stuffing, of crumbs of bread, pepper, salt, and powdered clove, or sweet marjoram, as you choose; roll the dressing up in the steak, wind a piece of twine around it, taking care to secure the ends. Have ready a kettle or deep stew-pan, with a slice or two of pork fried crisp. Take out the pork and lay in the steak, and turn it on every side, until it is brown. Then put in two gills of the stock, or of water in which meat has been boiled; sprinkle in a little salt, cover close, and stew slowly an hour and a half. Add more water after a while, if it becomes too dry. Some persons like the addition of chopped onion. There should, however, be very little; half of a small one is enough. When nearly done, add half a gill of catsup. When you take up the meat, unwind the string carefully, so as not to unroll it. Lay it in a fricassee dish, thicken the gravy, if not thick enough already, and pour it over the meat. Cut the meat in slices through the roll.

Tomato Steak

Take two pounds of beef; cut it in small strips, and put it into a porcelain kettle with seven medium tomatoes. Stew it slowly. Add a dessert-spoonful of sugar, salt, a little clove, and, just before you take it up, a dessert spoonful of butter. If you have tomato catsup, add a little, and if you like chopped onion, that also. Very tender beef is, of course, to be preferred; but that which is tough becomes more palatable in this than in almost any other way. This dish is quite as good, if not better, heated over the next day.

Beef A La Mode (In A Plain Way)

Take a thick piece of flank, or,, if most convenient, the thickest part of the round, weighing six or eight pounds, for a small family of four or five persons. Cut off the strips of coarse fat upon the edge, make incisions in all parts, and fill them with a stuffing made of bread, salt pork chopped, pepper, and sweet marjoram. Push whole cloves here and there into the meat; roll it up, fasten it with skewers, and wind a strong twine or tape about it. Have ready a pot in which you have fried to a crisp three or four slices of salt pork; take out the pork, lay in the beef, and brown every side. When well browned, add hardly water enough to cover it, chop a large onion fine, add eighteen or twenty cloves, and boil it gently, but steadily, three or four hours, according to the size. The water should boil away so as to make a rich gravy, but be careful it does not burn. When you take up the beef, add browned flour to the gravy, if it needs to be thickened.