Slow cooking a joint of meat is our easiest hack to guarantee a succulent and tender roast dinner. Your friends and family will be asking you for the recipe when you try this one.
It's an obvious one, but slow cooking a beef joint frees up the oven, which means there’s no need to worry about juggling oven space. Typically you'd need a double oven, or have to wait until the joint is out and resting to cook the rest of the meal, but with our easy slow cooker recipe, you can roast your veg, make Yorkshire puddings and crisp up your roasties, without having to make yourself a time plan.
Another reason why we love using a slow cooker is that the beef is ready when you are. With traditional roasts, timing is crucial, but with a slow cooker, there’s a much bigger window of time to get all the sides ready, leaving you less stressed.
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Yields:
6 serving(s)
Prep Time:
15 mins
Cook Time:
3 hrs 45 mins
Total Time:
4 hrs
Cal/Serv:
444
Ingredients
2
onions, thickly sliced
1
carrot, sliced
2Tbsp.
wholegrain mustard
1/2 tbsp mustard powder
1/2 tbsp finely chopped rosemary leaves
1
garlic clove, crushed
1/2 tbsp flaked sea salt
1/2 - 1tsp freshly ground black pepper
1kg beef roasting joint
500ml
beef stock
25g butter
25g plain flour
Directions
Step 1
Scatter the onions and carrot over the base of the pot of a slow cooker. In a small bowl, stir together both kinds of mustard, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper. Rub mixture all over the beef, then put the meat on top of the vegetables in the slow cooker. Pour the stock around the beef. Cover slow cooker with lid and cook on low for 3hr for medium meat, 3hr30min for well done meat (see GH Tip).
Step 2
Lift the joint on to a board or serving plate and cover with tin foil, allow to rest for 10min.
Step 3
Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour. Cook for 3-4min, stirring frequently until bubbling and golden. Strain cooking liquid into jug and discard the vegetables. Add strained liquid to the butter and flour mixture a little at a time, stirring well after each addition. Once 600ml of liquid has been added, bring to the boil and simmer for 3-5min until thickened, whisking constantly. Add more liquid if a thinner gravy is desired. Pour into a serving jug.
Step 4
Carve the beef into slices and serve with the gravy and your favourite roast dinner trimmings.
We’ve kept everything really easy for this recipe, by skipping the step where you have to brown the meat beforehand, which saves time and effort and is great for roast dinner beginners. However, if you want to brown your meat before adding it to the slow cooker, you can.
You can make a gravy with the cooking juices in the slow cooker while this beef joint cooks following the steps below:
Heat some oil or beef dripping in a large frying pan over a high heat, then fry the mustard-coated beef joint on all sides until browned and set aside.
Fry the veg in the empty beef pan until golden (it doesn’t need to be cooked through), then tip it into the slow cooker and sit the browned beef on top.
Add a glug of red wine, beer, stout or water to the empty frying pan, bring to the boil and scrape any residue from the bottom of the pan.
Tip this into the slow cooker and then continue with the rest of the recipe as written above.
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What to Read Next
Per Serving:
Calories: 444
Fibre: 2 g
Total carbs: 9 g
Sugars: 4 g
Total fat: 26 g
Saturated fat: 11 g
Protein: 43 g
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An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
