Roast Beef Topside with Red Wine & Rosemary

This succulent, medium-rare beef topside is full of flavors of red wine, mustard, and rosemary, and makes a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth roast dinner. Just don’t forget the duck fat roast potatoes!

Why you’ll love this roast beef recipe

The flavors! All beef’s besties are here. Red wine, garlic, rosemary, mustard. How can you go wrong with that combination?

It’s a super simple traditional roast recipe. All the hard work is done by leaving the meat to marinate and roasting at the right temperature. It’s a nice, simple way to infuse flavors into your roast. Pour a glass of wine, you’ve earned it.

A topside of beef is generally one of the cheaper cuts of beef, yet a great cut of meat for a roast. While it can be a tougher cut when used for fast cooking methods, by allowing it to cook slower, the connective tissue breaks down resulting in a dreamy, melt-in-your-mouth beef roast.

What you need to get started

• Beef topside roast. I aim for about 1.5kg to feed 6 people. In our house that’s dinner and roast beef sandwiches for days!
  
  
• Mustards – seeded mustard and Dijon mustard.
  
  
• Red wine – I use whatever is in my pantry. I always have a bottle of merlot or pinot in my house whether it’s to drink or cook with. When you are slow cooking with red wine, you don’t need to use the most expensive bottle on the shelf. For cooking, I normally will spend about $10-12 on a bottle, however because this dish pairs so well with red wine (and you only need a couple of tablespoons), I’ll buy a nice bottle to have with my roast dinner and just use that. 
  
  
• Herbs and Vegetables – garlic cloves, brown onions, fresh rosemary, and thyme (stripped of leaves and finely chopped)
  
  
• Porcini powder. You’ll find porcini powder in specialty food stores. Porcini powder is one of my favorite ingredients, so you’ll find it in a lot of my recipes. It adds a good bit of depth to a dish that ordinary white mushrooms don’t. Use it sparingly! A little goes a long way. If you can’t get your hands on it, grind down a few dried porcini mushrooms with a mortar and pestle – it’s the same thing.
  
  
• Olive oil, sea salt flakes, and freshly ground black pepper

The Nitty Gritty

1. Pat dry the beef with a paper towel and place it on a plate.
   
   
2. In a small bowl combine the mustard, red wine, rosemary, thyme, garlic, porcini powder, salt, and pepper. Stir all the ingredients together to combine. Rub the outside of the beef in the marinade and let the beef come to room temperature for an hour while the marinade infuses the beef.
   
   
3. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C
   
   
4. Cut the onion horizontally into 4, equal slices and place in the bottom of the roasting pan.
   
   
5. Place the marinating beef on top of the onion slices.
   
   
6. Drizzle with the olive oil and pop into the preheated oven.
   
   
7. Roast on high heat for 15 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 170 degrees Celsius and cook for a further 45 minutes or until your beef has an internal temperature of 50 degrees. Remove from the oven and cover with foil. Let the meat rest for 20 minutes or until your meat has an internal temperature of 55-60C. Carve and eat!

Equipment

First, you’ll need something to roast your beef in like a roasting pan. I make my marinade in a mortar and pestle to bruise the herbs a little, however, this is not necessary, and a small bowl will work as well. You’ll also need measuring tools and a basting brush.

To get a perfectly cooked beef joint to your liking, you’ll need a meat thermometer. I’m a huge fan of digital meat thermometers like the Meater. They Bluetooth to your phone and tell you when your meat is at the correct temperature, how long to rest for, etc. It definitely takes the guesswork out of trying to get a whole joint of meat perfectly medium rare!

How to serve roast topside beef

Go nuts for the perfect Sunday roast (or Monday roast!) and serve up your roast dinner with ALL the roast vegetables, potato & onion gratin, Yorkshire pudding, mushy peas, and homemade beef gravy. I’m drooling just thinking about it!

How to make beef gravy from the drippings

Reserve any dripping from roasting and resting. In the roasting tin or skillet combine the drippings and 2 tbsp plain flour. On medium heat cook the flour until the drippings start to thicken.

Add some beef stock and stir through the flour mix. Once it starts to thicken, add a little more stock. Add any extra flavor with herbs, mustard, wine, etc, and simmer for 15 minutes to deepen the flavor. The gravy will thicken the longer it simmers. At any time if you would like a thinner consistency, just add a little more beef stock or a splash of water.

Season with sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper.

Have leftovers?

Roast beef sandwiches all week sounds fab to me! A little mustard, cheese, tomato, lettuce, and some Spanish onion and I’m in sandwich heaven.

Any leftover meat from a roast topside joint makes the BEST beef salad the next day with a red wine vinegarette. Next day dinner done!

Here are a few more roast night recipes you might like…

• Greek Roast Chicken
• Leg of Lamb with Rosemary & Garlic
• Corned Beef Silverside
• Potato & sweet potato gratin