It’s hard to beat rare roast beef, but the perfect roast, a prime rib roast, is expensive. So, like Leslie who asks, “How do I cook a bottom round roast? We like our meat rare too. Also, what seasoning should I use?” we wonder how to make good roast beef on the cheap. Fortunately, it is doable.

This is a tough cut of meat. It’s a muscle the animal uses a lot and it has very little fat (marbling) to break up the strands of meat. The typical approach to such cuts is to braise them in liquid — bottom round is a popular choice for pot roast. But braising won’t produce a rare roast. If you want rare, you need to roast it.

Allow the roast to warm up on the counter for two hours.

Heat the oven to 475F.

Crush a couple of garlic cloves and rub them all over the roast. Next, season the meat liberally with salt and pepper and ground rosemary, then put it on a rack in a roasting pan, lay several strips of bacon over it, and cook it for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 250F and continue cooking until a thermometer reads 115F in the center of the roast (1 - 2 hours depending on the size of the roast). Crank the heat back up to 475F and cook until the thermometer reads 125F. (Note: an instant-read thermometer is far superior to the old-fashioned roasting thermometers with the big dial.) Remove from the oven, cover with foil, and let it rest for 15 minutes before carving.

The slow roasting insures that as much meat as possible is at the ideal degree of doneness.

If you want a more tender and flavorful roast, you can age it. Set the roast on a rack in roasting pan on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator — it should not, repeat not, be covered. Allow it to age for 5 - 7 days. During this time enzymes in the meat will both tenderize the flesh and improve the flavor. During this time the roast will also dry out on the outside. At the end of that time, use a very sharp knife to carve off the dried meat then roast as detailed above.

An aged roast looks terrible when it first comes out of the fridge, but if you cover it with anything in refrigerator it will spoil, by not covering it the moisture in the outer flesh evaporates quickly enough to keep bacteria from reproducing and spoiling the meat. Cut off the dried meat and you have a beautiful roast.