Food At Work: Inside Round

As I have stated before, my primary role at work is to man the Italian food station.  However, every so often (mostly on Fridays) they ask me to work another station.  In this case I was asked to work at the carving station, otherwise know at the Butcher Block.  In this instance I was asked to prepare slow roasted inside round with a wild rice blend and fried mushrooms and topped off with a house made steak sauce.

Let me start by saying that an inside round is a very LARGE piece of meat.  So that way that I prepared meat was that I first cut each round into thirds.  This gave me more surface area to season the meat and also greatly cut down the cooking time.  I then rubbed copious amounts of Montreal steak seasoning on the meat.  I placed all three pieces of each inside round into a deep hotel pan with a wire rack on the bottom and covered them with foil.  The foil served to keep the meat from browning too much too fast. It also helped with the cooking process since it helped keep moisture trapped inside the pan.  This moisture then turns to steam which circulates around the meat and helps cook it faster.  I put the beef in a 275 degree oven  for about 3 1/2 hours.  When the meat was about 90% done I took the foil off to allow the meat to brown.

 I pulled the meat out when the temperature right in the middle was at about 120 degrees.  Even though I cut the original inside rounds down, each piece was quite big.  Pulling the meat out at 120 degrees meant that there would be some variety of doneness with each piece of meat.  The outer edges would be close to medium or medium well while the middle would remain closer to rare. 

The wild rice blend was really just a packaged blend we got from Sysco foods.  In order to make it more appetizing that just cooking it the steamer, I added butter to my rice when I cooked it.  This added some nice flavor and richness.  I also seasoned the rice and tossed with some fresh parsley after it came out of the steamer.

The fried mushrooms were straight forward  fried mushrooms.  I did not batter them myself.  In the kitchen you pick your battles on what you can make fresh and what you have to concede and use something pre-made.  The key to using pre-made items is to know how to use them to get the highest quality.  For instance, the mushrooms had to be fried at the last minute so that they would remain crispy on the outside.

And last is the steak sauce.  The steak sauce was quite easy to make. It complimented the beef quite well and helped give moisture to those who enjoy their meat more well done.