From the NY Times, January 20, 2013
• ~3 lbs. Beef roast, e.g., top, eye, or bottom round • 1 tbs Kosher Salt • 1 tbs Freshly ground black pepper • 3 cloves Garlic, minced • 1 tbs Extra virgin olive oil
Remove roast from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil to create a kind of paste. Rub this all over the roast. Place beef in a roasting pan or cast-iron skillet, fat-side up, and put in oven. Cook undisturbed for 5 minutes per pound. Turn off oven. Do not open oven door. Leave roast to continue cooking, undisturbed, for two hours. After two hours, remove roast from oven. Let sit for a 5-10 minutes, then slice thin and serve.
This is a faith-based roast. Do not open the oven door after shutting off the heat, not once. Snaking the wire of an oven-safe meat thermometer out of the oven and onto the countertop will offer a fail-safe guarantee against overcooking. Remove the beef when its temperature reaches 120 degrees. The result is rare roast beef of remarkable tenderness, accomplished with a minimum of fuss. You can leave it until it reaches 130 for medium rare.