Silverside Beef Gravy

Silverside is lean and usually cooked slowly with liquid, so you end up with a tin full of stock rather than a tin full of fat and crust. That changes the job completely. Here you reduce the liquor hard first, then thicken it lightly, and the result is closer to a braising gravy than a roasting one.

Ingredients

Makes about 550ml, enough for six plates

• 700ml (1 1/4 pints) cooking liquor from the silverside including the softened vegetables
• 30g butter silverside gives up little fat of its own
• 2 tbsp (30g) plain flour
• 200ml (7fl oz) hot beef stock if the liquor has reduced below 700ml
• 1 tsp English mustard
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Wide saucepan
• Whisk
• Sieve
• Fat separator or jug

Method

1. Lift the silverside out and wrap it in foil to rest. Lean joints carry on cooking less than fatty ones, so twenty minutes is plenty and any longer and it starts to cool.

2. Strain the cooking liquor into a jug, pressing the vegetables through a sieve so their body goes into the gravy. Skim off what little fat rises, which will be a thin film rather than a layer.

3. Pour the liquor into a wide pan and boil it hard for eight to ten minutes to reduce it by about a third. Braising liquor is diluted by the meat's own moisture and tastes weak until you concentrate it.

4. In a second pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour. Cook this roux for three minutes over a medium heat, stirring, until it turns the colour of a digestive biscuit. You are building colour here that the pale liquor cannot supply.

5. Whisk the hot reduced liquor into the roux a ladleful at a time. It goes in fast and smooth as long as the liquor is hot and you do not stop whisking.

6. Simmer for eight minutes to cook out the flour and let it thicken. Add extra beef stock if it has become too tight, aiming for a gravy that coats a spoon but still moves.

7. Whisk in the mustard, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar. Lean beef needs sharpness more than fatty beef does, so be braver with the vinegar than you would for a rib of beef.

8. Strain into a warm jug, add any juices from the resting foil, and season generously. Silverside is often salted or brined before sale, so check before adding salt.

Tips worth knowing

• A separate pan for the roux is worth it here. Trying to make a roux in a tin swimming with braising liquor is how gravies go lumpy.
• Cook the silverside on a bed of onions, carrots and a bay leaf and the liquor is a gravy base before you have started.
• If the finished gravy still tastes weak, a teaspoon of Marmite is a faster fix than more reduction when the roast is already on the table.
• Slice silverside thinly across the grain and let the slices sit in a little gravy in a warm dish. Lean beef dries out quickly on a plate.

Keeping and reheating

Fridge for four days or freezer for three months. Because it is low in fat it reheats cleanly, just whisk it back to smooth over a low heat with a splash of stock.

Questions people ask