Stillroom Cookery boiled beef with carrots & horseradish.
This recipe is unique in building a sauce out of boiled beef stock with a roux, a good idea that makes the complimentary horseradish sauce possible. For the corned beef you could, if enterprising, use Grace Firth’s Stillroom Cookery spiced beef: The cure appears in the practical .
- about 3 lb corned (salt) beef
- 24 oz pale ale
- about 1 teaspoon allspice berries
- 2 or 3 bay leaves
- about 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
- about 4 cups carrots, peeled and cut into batons measuring something like ½ x 3 inches
- 2 Tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral oil
- 2 Tablespoons flour (preferably Wondra)
- about 2 cups liquid from simmering the beef
- 2 or 3 Tablespoons grated fresh horseradish
- ½ cup heavy cream
- Put the cured beef in a pot just big enough to hold it with the ale, allspice, bay and peppercorns with enough water barely to cover the meat.
- Bring the liquid to a boil then immediately reduce to a simmer until a fork pierces the meat like butter, usually in about 1½ hours.
- After ½ hour, dump the carrots into the pot. They should be tender coterminant with the beef.
- When the beef is tender, put the oil in a heavy skillet over medium high heat. Once it simmers, whisk in the flour to make a roux, then slowly dribble about 2 cups of the cooking liquid from the beef into the skillet. Let the sauce boil, reduce it to a simmer, then add the horseradish and cream. Immediately reduce the sauce to the merest simmer.
- Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the cream or it will curdle.
Notes:
-Firth boils her beef in water without the ale: The choice is yours.
- The original recipe adds potatoes to the simmering beef with the carrots. We like them better cooked apart but, again, your choice.