Roast beef is tastier with 1 unusual ingredient

Roast beef can be made to taste amazing if you add one unusual ingredient recommended by experienced cooks. Roast beef is a staple of British dinner, especially during the colder months of the year. When it comes to a Sunday roast, there is nothing like a well-cooked roast beef to fill us up and help us fully enjoy a day of rest and reset before the week ahead. Many households have their go-to way of cooking roast beef. But if you want to switch things up, then you should try this clever trick that uses an unexpected ingredient you've probably never considered before.

Multiple chefs and home cooks have recommended a coffee rub for roasting beef. While this might sound strange, it apparently gives the roast beef a gorgeous complementary flavour. Coffee is known for its deep and earthy flavour. When it comes to food, this is usually used when making desserts, such as coffee cake or tiramisu. But it turns out coffee can be used when making savoury dishes, such as British classics like roast beef. Plus, it also helps to tenderise the meat, giving it a more luxurious texture that will really make your Sunday roast pop.

The experts at Food52 use finely ground coffee or espresso powder to make their coffee-crusted roast beef, which they describe as easy yet tasty. They mix the coffee with brown sugar, garlic powder, cumin, rosemary, salt and pepper.

After patting the beef dry, they rub this mixture onto the meat and let it cook in the oven for around 45 minutes. A similar recipe was shared by successful food writer Julia Frey.

"Although it might sound unusual to flavour your beef with coffee, please don't dismiss this idea without trying," she said. "Trust me, it's not only coffee."

She uses a similar mix to create the rub, combining coffee with brown sugar, ground chipotle chilli, garlic and oil. She praises it for bringing a sweet, spicy and savoury flavour combination to her roast beef.

She added: "Apart from the delicious taste the rub imparts, the acidity in coffee also acts as a tenderiser." She also revealed that the coffee made for a great gravy, made from the drippings in the baking tin.

She was dubious about this at first, but she "absolutely loved" the gravy that she made, explaining that the touch of coffee and brown sugar gave the gravy a tasty edge.