By Sam Sifton

I made this with a 3 pound bottom roast beef and cooked it for 20 minutes at 500.* For my family, it was a little rare, so when I try this again, I’ll roast it for 25 minutes before turning the oven off and letting it sit for 2 hours. The roast was AMAZING! Taste was perfect!

INGREDIENTS

Yield: 4 to 6 main courses, with leftovers for sandwiches

• 1 beef roast, like top, eye or bottom round, approximately 3 pounds
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Red-pepper flakes to taste (optional)
• PREPARATION
• Remove roast from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
• In a small bowl, mix together salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and red-pepper flakes to create a kind of paste. Rub this all over the roast. Place beef in a roasting pan or cast-iron skillet, fat-side up, and put in oven. Cook undisturbed for 5 minutes per pound.
• Turn off oven. Do not open oven door. Leave roast to continue cooking, undisturbed, for two hours.
• After two hours, remove roast from oven. Slice and serve alongside, ideally, a watercress salad and some skillet-fried potatoes.