Flanken and Roast Beef Roll
Oct 8th 2007MargeFood & Recipes & Meat
This recipe is unashamedly meaty! I had decided to batch cook a fair amount of meat for the Jewish holidays and it is customary to use flanken (beef flank, i.e. side of beef), to make tzimmes (honey roast). I had never actually cooked with flanken before, preferring to cook a large roll of beef instead. This year I did both, in the same pot too! 
This is how the finished flanken and roast beef roll looked straight from the oven! This is a very easy recipe to make and the results are fabulous - as confirmed by all at Casa Marge.
A note about the meat: how much meat you want to cook will depend on how many people you are cooking for (and how hungry they are!) When I bought the meat I had a look at what the butcher had on offer and decided on two small pieces of flanken and one large beef roll. You may find your butcher has a large piece of flanken and the rolls of meat are small. Use your own judgement. I would strongly suggest you ask the butcher about cooking times when buying the meat!
Ingredients:
- Roast beef roll (your butcher will prepare this for you)
- Flanken (ask your butcher for beef flank)
- Carrots (about 3-4 large ones)
- Onion (large)
- Prunes (I used a 250g packet, but you might want to use less)
- Bay leaf (1 or 2 dried, or 3 fresh - again you may want to use less if you are cooking less meat)
- Rosemary (about a teaspoon of dried herb or a sprig of fresh)
- Oil to brown the meat
- Seasoning
- Honey (I used 3 tbps for a large beef roll and two pieces of flanken, adjust accordingly)
- Balsamic vinegar (1 tbsp) optional
- HP sauce (1 tbsp) optional
- Two cloves of garlic (optional)
Method:
- Preheat the oven to a high heat for 20 minutes.
- Season the meat to taste. I like to use coarse sea salt at it doesn’t ‘disappear’ into the meat straight away.
- Heat the oil and brown the meat carefully, making sure you get all the surfaces sealed. Set the meat to one side. (NB: This process doesn’t actually seal the meat as such because after cooking you will notice the volume of the meat has decreased because it looses moisture. However it is good practice to brown the meat as it adds to the flavour).
- Chop up the onion into slices and the carrot into batons, keeping the pieces fairly thick. Very lightly brown the vegetables in the same pan you did the meat in. You may need to add a little more oil. Place half the veg in the bottom of a large, deep pot (see pic above), or similar that is suitable for the oven. Add half the prunes and the garlic cloves (simply peeled and not cut), and herbs.
- Place the meat in the pot on top of the veg and dried fruit. (You could use dried apricots if you wish but not raisins!), and add the rest of the veg and prunes. At this point if you wish you can add 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and a splodge of HP sauce.
- Mix the honey with a little water and pour over the meat.
- Put the lid on the cooking pot (if you have no lid, then buy a proper oven pot you big silly! Or failing that use foil - just be careful when taking the pot out of the oven), and place in the top part of the oven - or as near to the top as you can bearing in mind the size of the cooking pot.
- Cook on high for 1 hour and then turn the light down to medium and cook for another hour or so.
- Naturally if you are using less meat you will need to lessen the cooking time. Personally I don’t hold with that pink in the middle nonsense about meat, so I like my meat well done. You may prefer it differently. Each to their own I say, even if you are weird…
- Serve with potato kugel.
- This dish will freeze well. Allow the meat and gravy (there will be loads of it!), to cool and transfer to large freezer bags or plastic freezer dishes.
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