The rump roast with mashed potatoes, gravy, a vegetable, and a small dinner salad is one of my favorite meals. You can dress up the roast with mashed potato piping and if you have room on the serving plate, cut two or three slices of roast and in front of the slices add some carrots.

When selecting a rump roast, plan on 1/2 pound per person. If you want leftovers add a couple of pounds so you can make other meals from the roast. If the roast has a bone, you will need to have more than 1/2 pound per person.

The advantage of cooking this meal is the numerous ways you can use the leftovers for lunches or dinners. A few ways to use the leftover beef is to cut some of the beef in strips for beef fajitas, cut some beef in chunks for beef stroganoff, or make a Caesar salad and add strips of beef, and roast beef sandwiches.

Rump Roast

Ingredients
4 lb rump roast
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper

Preparation
Turn on the over to 325 degrees.

Shake the salt, pepper, and garlic powder on the top, bottom and sides of meat. Place a rack in a shallow roasting pan and add about a cup of water. Place the meat on the rack. If you have a meat thermometer, you can stick it in at the thickest part of the meat. The meat thermometer should read 150-170 degrees or bake for 25-30 minutes per pound.

Meat is easier to carve if you let it set for 5-10 minutes after you remove it from the oven.  The meat continues to cook during that time so if you are going to let the roast rest before slicing take it out of the over 5-10 degrees early on the thermometer method and 10-15 minutes earlier if you are using the per pound method.

Piping Mashed Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes
Pastry bag, parchment paper cone, or plastic sandwich bag

Preparation
Prepare your favorite mashed potatoes. You can use a pastry bag with a decorator tip, make a cone shape pastry bag from a rectangular piece of parchment paper and cut off the end with a sharp scissors, or use a plastic bag and cut a diagonal on the corner of the bag. With the parchment paper you can use a decorator tip or just cut the end off to make a tip.

Hold the bag and carefully place the mashed potatoes in the bag. Hold the bag perpendicular to the serving platter when you squeeze it. Support the bag with one hand and squeeze with the other one as the mashed potatoes come out of the bag.

Gravy

Ingredients
Drippings from the roast
Salt and Pepper
1 tablespoon of cornstarch

Procedure
Take 1/4 cup of the drippings and put into a saucepan. Pour the remainder of the drippings into a fat separator like OXO Good Grips 4-Cup Fat Separator. Add the drippings to the saucepan.  If you do not have a separator, let the drippings sit for a few minutes and let the fat rise to the top and skim off the top of the drippings with a spoon. You do not have to get all of the fat; you just do not want it too greasy.

Add a couple of cups of water to the saucepan.

Turn the heat to medium stirring occasionally.

Take 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and mix it with a quarter cup of water. Stir until blended.

When the gravy has little bubbles around the edge of the saucepan, add the cornstarch mix slowly stirring constantly.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

When it gets as thick as you want, turn the gravy off and serve. If it is not thick enough for you, add more cornstarch and water.