My Nemesis, The Country -- October 2019

Roast beef has always been my nemesis; no matter how hard I tried it was either overcooked and chewy or an undercooked lump mocking me from its bed of crispy roasted potatoes.

Not for me the perfectly pink, tender slices of succulent goodness that the online recipes promised, my roasts of beef were garnished with sadness and regret and served with a side of wistful unfulfilled promise.

This was the case until one day a few years back I was watching a TV show where the host visited people’s houses and had dinner with them, and after he’d had dinner with them he cooked the meal they had served but he did it better. On this day it was roast beef and I watched intently. Reader, I even took notes.

The trick, he said, was a meat probe. A thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the roast, a device without which most roast beef is doomed to abject failure. A scenario with which I was all too familiar.

I rushed out and bought one. I defrosted a bolar roast, I pierced it and poked bits of garlic and rosemary inside, I massaged it with oil, I seared it, I preheated my oven and I inserted my meat probe. When the probe told me we had hit perfection I removed the roast and let it rest, it had been quite a journey and the poor thing deserved a wee lie down before the moment of truth.

Then I cut into it and OH LORDY! Faultlessly medium-rare! Instagramable af.

I instantly tweeted that I had finally mastered the dark art of roasting beef, part science and part black magic, I was finally in the club.

“Oh,” replied Trudi Bennett in the truly annoying way that only Trudi can, “I do mine in the crockpot. Never fails, perfect every time.”

What the actual what!? You can’t cook roast beef in a crockpot, it’s an abomination. It’ll never work, it’ll be horrible. Of course I had to try it.

The recipe is so simple it makes me cry. You take your crockpot, you empty a sachet of onion soup into the bottom and place your roast beef on top. Then you smear some cranberry jelly on top of the beef, put the lid on and set it on low for 9 hours. That’s it. Seriously. I weep.

Somehow when you lift the lid the meat has miraculously browned, it smells distractingly delicious while it rests and you make gravy from the large amount of liquid that has accumulated in the pot. Trudi just stirs in the onion soup, but I add butter and flour to thicken my gravy because I’m fancy like that. The meat is pink and tender, slightly sweet from the cranberry. I’ve taken to adding garlic as well, but the beauty of the original recipe is its simplicity.

If you’re on Twitter you should check Trudi out on @WardrobeFlair, she’s a personal stylist and fashion blogger, she may be annoying but she knows her way around a crockpot.