How to Make Detroit's Famous Zip Sauce for Roast Beef | Cook's Country (2024)

The 20th-century American author Napoleon Hill once wrote, “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”

Now, Hill probably wasn’t talking about roast beef.

But enduring expressions are versatile, so I think the sentiment can be applied. You don’t always need the bells and whistles of an expensive roast or fancy trimmings to create a truly delicious dinner. Take Cook’s Country’s Bottom Round Roast Beef with Zip-Style Sauce for example. In this recipe, an inexpensive cut of meat is made great with small but reliable techniques to create a tender, juicy roast.

Perhaps the greatest element of this dish? Zip Sauce.

Zip Sauce came to life in the 1940s in the kitchen of Lelli’s Inn, an Italian restaurant in Detroit. The butter-based steak sauce became so popular among customers that word of it quickly spread, and soon copycat sauces were cropping up in neighboring restaurants.

Today, bottled Zip Sauce can be found across Detroit and online thanks to enterprising chef Michael Esshaki. But if you’re after a homemade version that will make any cut of roast beef sing, then this Zip-Style Sauce is a perfect alternative.

The best thing about Cook’s Country’s version—aside from the smack of aromatic tang from fresh thyme and rosemary—is just how simple it is to make. In a single step that combines all the ingredients in no more than a few minutes, you have the perfect complement to your roast beef.

It’s small, but it’s great. Here’s how to make it.