Isn't it amazing how some things in your life you never forget? Well, that's how I am about my MawMaw's roast beef. Ummm! Tender, thinly sliced, piled on fresh French bread, slathered with mayonnaise, and topped off with lettuce and slices of tomato and dill pickle. Make one today!
4 5 lb. rump roast
10 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tsp. Frank Davis Beef Seasoning
Dash of fresh ground black pepper
2 tsps. coarse ground black pepper
1 cup hearty burgundy red wine
1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 can Campbell's Cream of Celery Soup
Fresh French bread,
Mayonnaise
Lettuce, tomato, dill pickle
First thing you do is take your 4-quart black, cast iron Dutch oven and spray it liberally including the inside of the lid with a non-stick spray (Pam, Wesson, or Vegelene).
Set your oven at 450 degrees.
Next, place the roast on a piece of freezer paper on the counter top and, with a sharp boning knife, trim away all the excess fat and silverskin.
Then, with a paring knife, make about a dozen or so slits in the meat and stuff each hole you make with a clove of garlic.
Follow this by sprinkling on the beef seasoning and the coarse ground black pepper and briskly rubbing it into the beef.
Now place the garlic-stuffed seasoned roast into the black pot, put the lid on the pot, and slide it into the back of the preheated oven on the center rack.
After about an hour and a half, remove the pot from the oven, gently lift out the roast, and set it aside on a platter momentarily.
Then take the wine and both cans of soup, add them to the black pot, and stir everything together thoroughly, making sure to scrape up whatever beef has stuck to and caramelized on the bottom of the pot.
Then return the beef to the pot and baste it all over with the wine and soup mixture.
Now put the lid back on the pot, slide the pot into the oven once again, and let the roast go for another 2 to 3 hours (at 350) or until it becomes so tender it begins to fall apart!
When you're ready to eat, take the roast from the pot, place it on a carving board, cut it into thin-slices, and transfer the slices to a oven-proof serving platter.
Then generously drizzle a number of ladles of the rich wine-gravy over the meat.
From this point, prepare the French bread, spread on the mayo, dress the sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes and dot it with the pickle slices.
All that's left is to round up something to drink and collect a stash of paper towels. Ohhhhh, yeah!
-------------
Chef's Notes:
- For a variation in the gravy, instead of the can of Cream of Celery Soup, substitute a can of Rotel Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies. The gravy will be slightly red and much spicier than the brown gravy version.
- If you don't have a hearty burgundy wine, any other good red wine will do. Just remember the criteria if you wouldn't drink it by the glass, don't cook with it!
- Oh and at this time of year the best dessert to cleanse the palate after a meal like this is with a plate of thinly sliced, ice-cold Plaquemines Parish navel oranges. And for a topper, a big ol' chunk of king cake fits the bill!
