Son of a Sailor

Cooking on a Green Egg.....low and slow is most often the best on an Egg, that's what they're designed for.

I’d never cooked Top Round Roast before and didn’t know what to expect, so this would be another cooking project or experiment depending on how it came off the Big Green Egg. The Green Egg is a barbecue that’s just what it sounds like, a Green Egg Shaped ceramic masterpiece that you DON’T normally find on a cruising sailboat. But I’m a bit different, so I’ve got my very own Egg mounted here on my sailboat and we cook on it, a lot. I had relatives coming to the boat and didn’t have time to go to my favorite meat store for a great cut of prime rib, so I grabbed what I could find at the store that would feed 6-7 people; the only kind of beef left was a good-looking Top Round. And it wasn’t that expensive, but the cookbooks said it was sometimes a tough meat and sometimes more challenging to cook. I like that, a good challenge but my Green Egg cooking skills rarely burn anything and I like to cook low and slow. That’s the key…..low and slow. But as I’ve written already, I’ve also cooked steaks on very high heat very quickly, so the Egg CAN do both.

For the Top Round, I wet rubbed it and let it sit with my home-made rub for at least an hour. My process for this rub is to use Olive Oil or Yellow Mustard as a base, then put on the dry spices and allow the meat to sit and absorb. While the meat is sitting, I prepped the Green Egg and allowed it to get to temperature, which is ideally 375, but varied between 350 and 400. I knew I didn’t want this cut of meat to overcook (dry out and get tough), so I figured on about 20 minutes per pound, so the overall cooking time was 140 minutes. During this cooking time I don’t often raise the lid (lets out heat) and I don’t allow others to raise it either. For this cook, I also wanted some smoke flavor, so I had thrown 3-4 chunks of dry cherry into a bucket and soaked them. I threw these into the grill before I set it up for indirect cooking. After getting the meat on the grill and watching it for temperature, I let er go for the next 140 minutes. When done, I took the meat off, then taking the meat from the grill platform and allowing it to rest in the drippings/juice for approx 10 minutes to soak back what it could. In the end, it worked. This cut of meat was smoky and well cooked, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Check it out below.

My version of Top Round, after resting for 10 minutes and ready to serve.

If you read the Green Egg Cookbook or anything about grilling, the resting part of the cook seems to have lots of importance, don’t skip this step in your process. I don’t have room for a separate pan to allow it to rest, so it goes right into the drippings pan (right or wrong- not sure?). But it was good meat.

We don’t eat red meat or pork lots here on the boat (but it may seem like it), so you will see other recipes used with as much Green Egg but less meat as we go along. Here’s another view: