Recommendations · Wine and food

Oven-roasted roast beef with Chateau Balac Haut Medoc

A roast beef that cooks slowly in the oven and stays pink inside, with a potato and cream gratin alongside. A Haut-Médoc from Bordeaux sets its tannin against the protein of the meat.

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Bottle of Chateau Balac Haut Medoc, wine

From the shelf

The bottle

Chateau Balac Haut Medoc comes from Bordeaux in France and is made from merlot, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc. The wine is 13 percent by volume and the bottle holds 75 centilitres. In our range it is listed as fruity and soft: a Haut-Médoc in which the tannin is noticeable without becoming austere.

Chateau Balac Haut Medoc

The combination

Why this works together

Roast beef that stays pink is lean meat with a lot of protein and little fat. Tannin binds to that protein, and the astringency you can still feel in the glass drops away immediately next to a slice of meat. The gratin brings cream and cheese, and the wine needs its acidity for that: it cuts through the fat so that the next bite starts clean again. The spicy tone of cabernet franc runs in step with the pepper on the meat.

At the table

The dish

  • Before 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour and 30 minutes
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 1 kilo roast beef in one piece
  • 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
  • 25 grams butter
  • 2 sprigs of thyme
  • 1 kilo waxy potatoes
  • 300 milliliters of whipping cream
  • 150 millilitres full-fat milk
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 100 grams mature cheese
  • 1 pinch of nutmeg
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

How to make it

  1. Take the meat out of the fridge an hour before use. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
  2. Peel the potatoes and slice them two millimetres thick on a mandoline or with a sharp knife.
  3. Rub a baking dish with a halved clove of garlic. Then squeeze out the garlic and stir it into the cream and the milk. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
  4. Arrange the potato slices in overlapping layers in the dish, pour the cream mixture over them and sprinkle with the grated cheese. Bake the gratin in the oven for one hour.
  5. Pat the roast beef dry and sprinkle it all over with salt and pepper.
  6. Heat the sunflower oil in a frying pan until it almost smokes and brown the meat all over in four minutes. Add the butter and the thyme and baste the meat for half a minute.
  7. Place the roast beef next to the gratin in the oven and cook it until the core reads 52 degrees, about 35 minutes for a one-kilo piece. Use a meat thermometer, because thickness counts for more than time.
  8. Take the meat out, lay it loosely under foil and let it rest for fifteen minutes. Then cut it into thin slices against the grain and serve with the gratin.

In the glass

Serving

Pour the wine at 16 to 17 degrees into a generous red wine glass. Open the bottle half an hour before the meal or decant it; that brings the fruit forward and puts the tannin slightly further back.

All about Chateau Balac Haut MedocBack to Recommendations from ’t Bockje

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