Roast Beef Limerick

On Sundays, sometimes to keep them all sweet,
I cook them a joint of some sort of meat
Beef is the best,
No word of a jest
The trimmings just make it complete.

Asparagus tips and horseradish sauce
The pudding from Yorkshire, of course!
The spuds cooked in fat,
And crispy at that,
I serve it, I do with no hint of remorse!

The beef must be rare, you may disagree,
The gravy au jus, not gloupy you see.
The wine will be red,
The poor cow is dead,
Enjoy the results and just tuck in with glee!

52 thoughts on “Roast Beef Limerick”

  1. When am I invited for a meal? If beef isn’t rare – don’t bother to serve it to me!

    The poor cow is dead

    If I’m eating out with my daughter and I order steak she always tells them that her mother wants it ‘just about dead’… 🙂

  3. Absolutely! I refuse to cook steak or beef for anyone other than Bearsy – and I probably would for my mother, too. I’ll add you to the list!

    I once invited a couple for a meal who said that they liked their steak ‘well-done’. Incinerated would be more like it. After an hour and a half of trying to get the steak to their liking, I gave up. Mine, of course, was utterly ruined by that stage.

  4. One of the joys about eating out around here on Sunday is that you can choose how you like your roast beef, and it does come rare.

    I have no problems with sending a steak back because it is over-done in a restaurant and luckily the whole family likes it rare. It is so expensive here and we do have beautiful beef, and I cannot bear to ruin it.

  5. I have no problems with sending it back either! At least here in Queensland most restaurants know what I mean when I say I want my steak blue. At our local bowling club they serve a ‘Hot Rock’ which means that I get a raw eye fillet and cook it myself…

  6. Evenin’ Araminta. When I stick a fang or a fork into a steak I expect the thing to leap up mooing. Good pome and good-looking Yorkshires, but aren’t you being a bit parsimonious with the veg and roasties? And where’s the mash?

    OZ

  7. OMG’s recipe for steak on the BBQ: Fire up the barby to as hot as it will go with the lid lowered, this involves two packs of Sainsbury’s self lighting charcoal. When it has reached max temp whip the lid up and bang two steaks on the griddle and shut lid. Wait thirty seconds, whip the lid up and turn the steaks and shut lid, wait another thirty seconds and whip em out and serve, lovely.

  8. Hello OZ.

    Thank you. I don’t do mash with roast potatoes, although I do roast parsnips in the winter. No one in my family will eat mash if roast pots are up for grabs.

    Yes, it is a bit mean, but this is the first pass at it, I can’t abide full plates. There is always plenty more in serving dishes, which I keep warm, and plenty of gravy!

  10. Many’s the time I have cooked on the barbie under a dripping golf umbrella listening to wise cracks from the open patio door as friends and family shelter from the rain, that’s half the fun.

  11. Aha! Point taken on ‘first pass’, but being a wolf of very little personal refinement I find it difficult to mop up lashings of good gravy with a roastie, particularly one cooked in dripping or (Heaven on Earth) goose fat. Give me a cloud of fluffy mash as well with the potatoes passed through a ricer and with lashings of butter, an egg or two and some double cream whisked in.

    OMG – Good man yourself, but don’t overdo them. I once did a big bowl of steak tartare for lunch in the office complete with all the seasonings, onion, diced capers and the raw egg on top. It was absolutely delicious but my colleagues were mortified. Philistines!

    OZ

  12. Everyone sounds very civilised here… but you can keep the mashed potato and the gravy 🙂

    Like Araminta, I hate a plate piled high – so even if there are just two of us we always put the veggies in bowls.

  13. Morning.

    As a lover of Blackpool and the Lancashire county cricket team, Yorkshire pudding has never sank my boat (Y4 – Miss). Roast beef, however, especially the fat, is a chewey ambrosial delight.

    Ara, what a brilliant line. As good as any wordsmith or worth.
    “The poor cow is dead” LOL + 🙂

  14. Zang
    I’ll try anything twice but I have never dipped my fork in the alleged delights of steak tartare, don’t know why, I guess I always say goodbye to the tartare

  18. There once was a man from afar
    Who dined out on steak tartare
    he wiped clean his plate
    burped, said that was great and
    died two days later from schlar.

    (Schlar is an old Libyen word for food poisoning)

  21. Boa: BBQ recipe for you.
    Take a whole fillet and place it on a VERY hot BBQ, having peppered and salted its exterior.
    Roll it 30 degrees or so every couple of minutes, until the outside is uniformly lightly charred.
    Remove and slice thinly. 90% of it will be extremely rare with a delicious charred rim to it, for flavour.
    Similarly, large slabs of tenderloin sliced by the butcher across the grain, as available in the USA, placed on a v. hot bbq and charred externally, and then sliced thinly like bacon, is out of this world – again still pink and bleeding internally – and relatively affordable compared with a whole fillet. The Brits generally have no idea what it is, apart from delicious, and butchers here will only cut it in the right way for this, if instructed.

  22. Don’t forget to roast the spuds in goose fat! Looks yummy and I agree that the meat should have just stopped quivering.

    OMG: Steak Tartare, it is great.

  23. CWJ – First acquire a BBQ! Bearsy used to cook whole fillet like that when we lived in Sydney. We keep saying we will buy a BBQ here – but have never got round to it!

    Steak Tartare is great – except the twice I’ve had it in France I’ve been ‘orribly ill…

  25. Thank you for your comments, everyone.

    Aren’t we a civilised lot!

    Thanks JW, I thought that was the best line too!

    Yes, FEEG, goose fat is wonderful, I absolutely agree.

    Nym: yes, what is wrong with bread to mop up the gravy?

    A whole fillet, CWJ? Yes, I used to buy them but I picked one up last Christmas from the local butcher for a friend, and nearly fainted at the price!

    I’m not sure I could cope with actually cooking one these days; the responsibility, but yes your method sounds ideal. It’s not easy to do in a conventional oven!

  27. coldwaterjohn :

    An “Australian” without a BBQ??????!!!!!!

    Yes, a diabetic Australian whose diet is severely restricted, and who has “been there, done that, got the T-shirt”.

    … and drop the quotes, CWJ, it’s offensive to the 5 million Australians who happened to have been born elsewhere.

  29. Blimey, Bearsy.

    A BBQ is just another heat source and one that to be fair is much used where climatically speaking, it is preferable to cooking inside.

    You can cook almost anything on a BBQ, as I well know, but mine gave up the ghost a couple of years ago, and unless we have an extraordinarily hot summer, I am unlikely to replace it.

  30. “… and drop the quotes, CWJ, it’s offensive to the 5 million Australians who happened to have been born elsewhere.”

    I’m Australian and it doesn’t offend me in the least, Bearsy. 🙂

  31. I wish I’d ignored the comment, Bilby, but as it happens I used a barbie for years – it’s only since we moved to Brisbane that we’ve been without one.

    On the other matter – you haven’t had a series of bloggers who have sneered at you that “you’re not a proper Australian”. I have, and it pisses me off. I agree that it would be better to ignore them, but that’s what makes me me. 😎

  32. “you haven’t had a series of bloggers who have sneered at you that “you’re not a proper Australian”

    No, I haven’t had THAT, admittedly, but I’ve taken some flak on other matters. 🙂

    I realise you are sensitive about this, Bearsy, but I took CWJ’s comment to be light-hearted. Perhaps you could give him the benefit of the doubt.

  33. Well, you never know, Bilby, perhaps one day even Sipu will be polite to me and pigs will fly …

    Nah, you play nice cop and I’ll continue to do my best impression of a Queensland senior sergeant.

    😎

  37. Thing is Bearsy, I don’t just ‘play’ nice cop, I live it. Nah, you don’t believe that do you? You’re right, I’m just a wimp, but a really nice Australian wimp! 😉

  40. Chris Hurley – stomped an abo to death and was then found innocent by an enquiry that was staffed by his mates. Not a nice bunch of Aussies.

    Bilby – Of course I believe it, and I admire you for it. I just ain’t that nice. 😦

  42. Oh, you can be, Bearsy. Perhaps you are in a bad place just now … and I don’t mean Australia! 🙂

  45. Prob’ly you’re right, Bilby. 😥
    I must away, we’ve a busy morning ahead; Sunday morning brekky at the Samford Tavern with number one daughter. Catch you later.

  48. Excellent, and it’s made my taste-buds go twang, Araminta!

    My mother didn’t go for “jus” but rich, brown thick gravy made from the meat juices and veggie water plus a tot of port. She made it so thick when it was cold and set you could almost slice it! 😀

    I remember Christmas evenings when she’s rustled up heavenly turkey sarnies, with turkey, two kinds of stuffing and a bit of leftover gravy. Delish.

  50. Thank you, Jan.

    My mother was the same. I’m breaking away, and I must confess to adding a slug of brandy and or red wine to the “jus”, if the mood takes me.

    Frankly trying to produce enough “jus” is fraught with difficulties, and exceedingly expensive!

  52. I wish I could Janus. That one about Nymphomaniacal Jill has completely ruined me for limericks.
    😀
    It I get inspired, though. I’ll be back…

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