Eye Round Roast came out nice & juicy, but super tough, Why?

I was in Sam's Club the other day and bought an Eye Round Roast. The meat department employee told me this is the same slab of meat they cut rib eye steaks from. I was skeptical, because the meat was way too lean, and nearly zero marbling. Also the cross section of this roast looks nothing like a rib eye at all, it was just like a solid red log of meat.

Anyway I did a great job cooking it, I made my own beef marinade injection, and injected it first, and marinated it, for 2 hours, then put in my grill for about 3 hours low and slow at 250 degrees, measured at the height of the top of the roast about 4" off the surface of the grill grate.

It cooked beautifully, it was super moist and juicy, as I sliced it the juices flowed wonderfully from the roast. The problem is this roast was super tough, so tough in fact that I had a real hard time getting the knife to even slice this this roast. This was the worst piece of meat I think I ever bought, it was tough to even chew it. I measured 138 degrees at the center of the roast when I removed it from the grill, medium rare. It was not over cooked nor under cooked.

I've been doing this so long and never had any screw-ups, so I doubt it's anything I did. Is this a problem with eye rounds? I'm suspicious about this type of cut, because none of my dozen or so BBQ cookbooks have any recipes or instructions for it, which tells me most people probably avoid this cut. See photos below that I shot during the cooking:

Eye of round is tough.
Very lean & from the round .
It's not the same as the ribeye which is from the Loin.
Best way to cook outdoors is to cook to med-rare & rest , then slice thinly accross the meat grain, a meat slicer works well.

Yup. that's exactly what I did, let it rest 10 minutes before cutting. I used a razor sharp knife that I use for slicing the turky at Thanksgiving.

I won't soon be cooking another one of these, it's just not tender cut of meat at all. I wonder however, if a Wagyu version would have been better, at about 4x the cost.

That is odd because it sounds like you cooked it ok, perhaps it was just that piece of meat. I know it can be tender because this is the cut I use for Baltimore pit beef sandwiches. But as lostarrow mentioned, it does need to be sliced VERY thin, which is why I break out my slicer for this cut.

Jim

Looks like you cooked it BEAUTIFULLY!!! Dang...

But lostarrow is right, the Ribeye Steak and the Eye of Round come from two completely separate parts of the cow...



The Eye of Round has a reputation of not having a lot of flavor, as well as being tough like you discovered. jfm0830 is right about the meat slicer. You really need to slice it paper thin if you don't want to give your jaw a workout.

Dyal_SC,

Thanks for diagram, that was one of the better ones I've seen. I assume you mean an electric carving knife is what I should have used?

I still have half of the roast left to experiment, sort of apost mortem!

Probably more like a deli meat slicer. You can use that cut of beef for "Pit Beef" style sandwiches like jfm0830 stated. I've also had this cut in a crockpot before (*GASP*... ) and it was decent. FYI, my father cooked it in the crockpot, not me.

This issue I find with the eye round is that it has no marbling AND no "grain." Even a rump roast has a little of each of those. This can make the eye round both dry and tough. As many agree here, a pit beef approach is one of the few ways to make this cut worthwhile, and as you'll see in MD., most purveyors of pit beef are using a deli slicer to keep the slices as thin and uniform as possible. If you are really good with a sharp knife, go for it.

I don't have access to a deli slicer, so I might with the remaining half og this eye round roast, I might cut it up into small cubes and make like a steak salad out of it.

Or... set it up on the wall in our back yard and use it for taqrget target practice...

Not an Eye round guy.. but damn that looked perfect!

America's Test Kitchen has a roast beef on-the-cheap recipe using eye round. It calls for salting overnight to give flavor and tenderize. I've been doing this when and it works well. That said, you can't go past medium rare.

rogerja wrote:

America's Test Kitchen has a roast beef on-the-cheap recipe using eye round. It calls for salting overnight to give flavor and tenderize. I've been doing this when and it works well. That said, you can't go past medium rare.

Salting will probably help. If it is a fairly small roast, Jaccarding definitely helps. But in general, I try to avoid buying these cuts to begin with.

I will not be buying this cut again ever! So last night, my wife sliced some of it up as thin as she could get the slices, about 3/16 of an inch thick. We were able to chew through it ok, and can you beleive it, the meat was still super juicy 4 days later after cooking. Still had great flavor too, since I used my custom beef base and beef au jus marinade injection.

Chef's Choice has a $100 slicer (I went a little more upscale for $150) that I guess has paid for itself over the five years I have owned it. Considering the price of deli-lunch meat vs. slice-you-own leftovers, and ESPECIALLY home made beef jerky over store bought ....

http://www.target.com/p/chef-s-choice-s ... pla&ci_kw=

Might be an idea, that's a low cost slicer. the meat was delicious already, and now easy to chew once we sliced it up. For leftovers we served it a few different nights with Jack's Old South Vinegar Sauce, and also trie dJack's Old South BBQ sauce as well. Maybe I won't avoid this cut of meat in the future, now that I know how to serve it up.