The Primal Blueprint Cookbook (6 page)

Sliced rare or medium-rare, deli roast beef is a great convenience food for easy meals and snacks, but who wants the additives often found in commercial roast beef? Making your own at home is easier than you think.

SERVINGS:

Varies, depending on the size of the roast. Approximately one-third to one-half pound per serving.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Combine the garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Rub the meat well with seasoning mix, coating all exterior surfaces of the roast. For the best flavor and even cooking, let the roast sit out two hours at room temperature, loosely wrapped in a plastic zip bag.

Preheat the oven to 250°F.

Place the meat in a small roasting pan and insert a meat thermometer (with the tip in the center of the roast at the thickest part), and cook for half an hour.

Turn the temperature down as low as the oven will go (170°, 160°F, 150°F is even better). Continue cooking until meat is very rare (120–125°F), rare (130°F), or medium-rare (135–140°F). More well done than this will not yield good results with these lean cuts. Grass-fed bison and wild venison will cook quicker than beef because they are extremely lean and don’t have the internal marbling that grain fed beef has.

Remove roast from the oven, cover loosely with foil, and rest for 10 minutes. Cut into the thinnest possible slices with a very sharp slicing knife and serve warm. For authentic deli-style roast beef, cool 20 minutes longer on the counter, then chill several hours in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Slice into very thin slices, using a very sharp slicing knife. An electric meat slicer is even better as it make extremely thin slices. Only slice off what you can use each time, because the larger roast has less exposed surface area for oxidation and will keep better than the slices, at least several days to a week.

Chili is simple to prepare and is a very good recipe to make on the weekend while tending to household chores in between cooking steps. Be sure to make enough for leftovers as chili reheats well and perhaps even tastes better after the spices meld during a night or two in the refrigerator.

This is a delicious meat-based chili (bean-free); very rich and flavorful due to the touch of bacon and its fat, the long simmering time, and the addition of a secret ingredient, cocoa powder.

Chili also is easy to scale up or down in servings, and is economical when feeding a crowd. This version of chili is not very spicy; feel free to add more spice or hot pepper to taste. It can also be made with ground beef, preferably grass-fed. Grass-fed bison and beef are quite lean and should never be cooked over high heat temps.