Sunday Roast Beef in Spain: Which Joint to Buy and How Long to Roast It

What to ask for at a Spanish counter

The joints (US: roasts) are all here, just cut differently: Spanish butchers usually slice topside and silverside into thin frying steaks (filetes) and rib of beef into thick bone-in steaks (chuletones). Ask for the piece whole and give a weight: “un trozo de tapa de kilo y medio, en una pieza, para asar” (a kilo and a half of topside in one piece, for roasting). If you want it tied, add “atado, por favor“. Rosbif is the dish, not a cut; the cut names are all in our guide to beef cuts in Spanish.

Our topside is yearling (añojo, 12–24 months) retinto, a native red breed of south-west Spain: mild, tender and pale red. The bone-in retinto loin for a rib roast is mature cow (vaca) over 48 months: darker, with yellow fat and a deeper flavour.

Roast beef cooking time per kg, in Celsius

Take the joint out of the fridge an hour ahead, pat it dry and salt it. Give it 20 minutes at 220 °C (430 °F), then 160 °C (320 °F) for the minutes per kilo below. If you brown it in a hot pan first, skip the hot start.

So a 1.5 kg topside for pink takes 20 minutes at 220 °C plus about 50 at 160 °C: about 70 minutes in all. Use the lower figure for a fan oven (US: convection oven; horno con ventilador) or a slim redondo, and the higher one for a conventional oven or a squat block of tapa.

Shape matters as much as weight, and a rib weighed with its bones throws the sums out, so let a probe thermometer (termómetro de cocina) in the centre, clear of any bone, have the last word; start checking 15 minutes early. The full scale is in our doneness guide.

Silverside, slowly

For a table that likes its beef well done, pot-roast the silverside: lean joints roasted dry to well done turn tough. Brown it all over, put it in a casserole (US: Dutch oven) with onion, carrot, red wine and some stock (caldo), cover and leave it at around 150 °C (300 °F) for about three hours for 1.5–2 kg.

Resting and carving

Lift the joint onto a warm board, cover it loosely with foil and leave it for 15–20 minutes: the centre climbs another 3–5 °C (5–9 °F) and less juice runs out when you carve. Use the time for the Yorkshire puddings and the gravy: spoon most of the fat out of the roasting tin (US: roasting pan), add wine and stock, scrape up the browned bits and let it bubble. More on resting meat.

Carve thin, across the grain. With a rib, cut the meat off the bones in one piece, then slice it.

Buying a whole joint

Our topside (approx. 4.5 kg), silverside (approx. 7.5 kg) and top rump (approx. 4.5 kg) come whole. Cut them into joints of about 1.5 kg, tie each with kitchen string (US: butcher’s twine; hilo de cocina) every 3 cm and freeze the ones you will not roast that weekend; thaw in the fridge for 24–48 hours. The tied redondo needs none of this.