Is Brooklyn Beckham’s roast beef recipe worth it?
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Everyone is talking about Brooklyn Beckham’s beef, and not necessarily in a good way.
The aspiring chef came to grill this week after posting a video of his own spin on a traditional Sunday roast with chef Kevin Lee at his instagram channel.
Some people brought up the fact that they thought the prime rib he served was ‘raw’, and others were appalled by the ‘heart attack-inducing’ amount of butter he coated it with before cooking.
The recipe, shared on Lee’s own and Brooklyn’s Instagram channels, is quite easy. Take a dry-aged prime rib, coat it in a mixture of garlic, thyme, rosemary, and what feels like a ton of butter, then brown it upside down: cook it first on low, then on high to finish, instead of to do it the other way around. – and ta-dah.
Femail put Brooklyn Beckham’s Sunday Roast Ribs recipe to the test to see how raw the meat would actually look…
Of course, these things are always a bit more complicated than they first appear, especially for a hobby cook. Maybe that’s why Brooklyn brings a chef into action.
First of all, you won’t necessarily find some dry-aged beef at your local grocery store.
Still catching up on the Christmas rush, my own local butchers don’t have any any time soon, although apparently they can hang some on me to use three weeks from now.
Fortunately, I don’t live too far from Aubrey Allen, where his own meat cabinet shakes under the weight of several hunks of jerky. I choose my piece of three ribs and leave, ready to give him the Beckham treatment.
Mincing fresh rosemary, thyme, and garlic is pretty simple, but when I mix it with the 16 ounces of butter called for in the recipe, I confess to being nervous about how much I have to spread on the meat.
I love a bit of butter and I’m in the James Martin fan club when it comes to throwing a bunch on everything, but this actually seems a bit excessive. So much so, that I don’t use it all.
I can’t make up my mind, and given that a prime rib this size will set you back over £60, it almost seems sacrilegious to cover a large amount of meat with so much fat, especially when you already have plenty of your own.
It goes into the oven quite low (once I translated the Fahrenheit our friends across the pond use to the more common Celsius we use here) and then we wait.
Fortunately, the instructions are based on checking the temperature of the meat in several stages rather than calculating time by weight.
Math was never my forte, so I rely on a reliable temperature probe to check on the fly, wondering if I’m going to face the same criticism that Beckham has rarely received in response to his video.
Following Brooklyn’s instructions, Ellen massaged the butter mixture into the meat until it was completely covered.
The Los Angeles-based chef came under fire for his roast beef after people said it looked too raw online (Pictured: Ellen’s finished meat)
It takes a few hours for the first stage, as you would expect given how low the temperature is according to the instructions, before “tent” with aluminum foil for the next one, which apparently is only while it gains about a degree in heat.
It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’ve never cooked beef this way: always hot first, then colder, instead of the other way around.
It then has to rest, before going into a very hot oven for just six minutes for the final stage.
A raw deal? Brooklyn Beckham ‘spent £300’ on his ‘rare’ roast beef and fans criticized the budding chef for ‘spending more on a meal than families spend in a week’
Ready to moo: Brooklyn fans were convinced the meat fell apart after it cut through the joint and showed off the finished product
The 30 minute rest period at the end comes with the usual impatience as we wait to see what the final result is.
Based on Beckham and Lee’s video, it’s pretty weird. Very rare, in fact, and looks just like the one in Brooklyn that caused so much consternation.
As someone who loves rare meat, it’s not a problem for me. Neither is it for Brooklyn’s mom, Victoria, who jumped to her defense in response to the backlash to her creation, telling critics: “It’s weird that people aren’t crude.”
I decide to adopt the same response if anyone has something to say, but back off at the last minute and leave it a bit longer for the final stage than the six minutes the recipe calls for.
For the recipe you need a roast beef, as well as rosemary, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper and lots of butter.
Ellen began the process by preparing and salting the meat, following Brooklyn’s instructions exactly.
It’s actually great, but I think those minutes helped make it more weird than raw.
And that’s speaking as a lover of rare meat. Tastes good. But the beef rib always does.
Does it taste better than a decent quality prime rib cooked conventionally? I do not think.
Once the meat was seasoned, Ellen mixed the butter with the herbs to make a thick paste.
It’s time to put the meat in the oven! Due to Brooklyn’s recommended low temperatures, the meat was allowed to cook for several hours on low heat.
And I’m with a lot of other people who feel it needed a little more time than the Brooklyn recipe to push it over the edge from raw to rare.
I’m also not sure what massive benefit butter brings other than melting into a puddle on the tray below.
Some called Brooklyn reckless for her cooking methods. In my opinion, that goes a bit far. But as much fun as it is to try something different, I think I’ll stick with how I usually cook a prime rib, thanks.
As it cooked in Ellen’s oven, the delicious piece of dry-aged meat looked tender and crisp.
Ellen cut the piece in half to test how raw it was after cooking it on low heat for hours and roasting it on very high heat for six minutes.
Despite putting the meat back in the oven for another six minutes, Ellen was flabbergasted by how raw it still looked.
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