Roasted meats and left overs and meat thrift
This thread was originally posted by myself at another place. I have moved it here and will be adding to it.
Thought I would start a thread on roasted meats, how to roast and what to roast meat with and suggest some recipes for left over roast meat. The French have called the English ‘Le Roast Beefs’ for hundreds of years because they used to get English cooks to teach them how to roast meat. A lot of people just bang any old bit of meat in the oven for x minutes a pound and then a bit longer as they are scared it will be under done. Hopefully, you might try some roasting adventures and post results.
First thing first. Know your oven. It might be electric or it might be gas, it doesn’t matter. You need to buy an oven thermometer. Heat up your oven and put the thermometer in for a good few minutes. Take it out and get the temperature. Learn what setting on the oven will give what temperature.
Before you roast any meat, leave it in the kitchen for at least an hour. You want the meat to come up to room temperature. Don’t put cold meat in an oven.
The first roast I will go over is shoulder of lamb. You will need:
- A shoulder of lamb – a full shoulder will do 4-6 people and give leftovers – if you have less people, you can cut the shoulder on the diagonal
– You will need a cleaver to get through the bone, or your butcher can do this for you.
When buying meat, buy the best you can find. While you can buy organic in the supermarket, it will not be a patch on extensively raised meat from a good butcher. If you can get organic, local extensively raised meat, great, if not, get the best you can find. Don’t worry about the price, a pound of good meat will go twice as far as a pound of ordinary meat.
- A bulb of garlic, unpeeled
- Fresh rosemary
Get your oven up to temperature. From getting to know your oven, you should know how long it takes. Get it up as hot as possible. Put the rosemary and garlic in a roasting tin or tray – I use a deep cast iron Le Creuset roaster. Slash the meat a little, mainly where you can see the fat then rub the meat with a little olive oil and add salt and pepper. Place the meat on top of the rosemary and garlic and put some more rosemary and garlic over the meat. Cover it all with tin foil and make sure it is tight to the roasting pan. Put in the oven and as soon as you have closed the door, turn the oven down to gas 3/170c/325f and cook for 3-4 hours.
When done, remove the meat from the tray and cover the meat with foil. Place it somewhere warm, because it’s time to make gravy. Roast meat should always have a gravy or sauce. You are going to need:
- 1 tablespoon flour
- A pint of hot chicken or vegetable stock (I will cover making stocks at a later time)
- 2 heaped tablespoons capers, rinsed and chopped
- A bunch of fresh mint, leaves picked and stalks discarded then chopped
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Pour off as much fat as you can from the roasting tin and remove the rosemary, but leave the garlic. Add the flour and mix, getting all the sticky bits from the bottom of the pan, and mash up the garlic. Add the chicken stock and mix – I whisk – it will become thick gravy very quickly and you don’t want lumps. Add the chopped capers. The gravy should be very hot now, so turn down the heat. Just before it is ready to serve add the mint and red wine vinegar.
The meat will not need carved, more pulled apart. It should be so tender you should be able to pull the bone out – careful, it will be hot, use tongs. Pull the meat to pieces and put on its serving tray.
You can serve this with any vegetables you like. When I have roast meat I always have roast potatoes, carrots, swede and depending on what else I have some choices from cabbage, parsnips, brussel sprouts, cauli, broccoli, kale, roasted leek, onion or shallots.
Serve with a good bottle of red wine and enjoy it. Enjoy it again the next day when you make shepherd’s pie (to follow).
Thought I would start a thread on roasted meats, how to roast and what to roast meat with and suggest some recipes for left over roast meat. The French have called the English ‘Le Roast Beefs’ for hundreds of years because they used to get English cooks to teach them how to roast meat. A lot of people just bang any old bit of meat in the oven for x minutes a pound and then a bit longer as they are scared it will be under done. Hopefully, you might try some roasting adventures and post results.
First thing first. Know your oven. It might be electric or it might be gas, it doesn’t matter. You need to buy an oven thermometer. Heat up your oven and put the thermometer in for a good few minutes. Take it out and get the temperature. Learn what setting on the oven will give what temperature.
Before you roast any meat, leave it in the kitchen for at least an hour. You want the meat to come up to room temperature. Don’t put cold meat in an oven.
The first roast I will go over is shoulder of lamb. You will need:
- A shoulder of lamb – a full shoulder will do 4-6 people and give leftovers – if you have less people, you can cut the shoulder on the diagonal
– You will need a cleaver to get through the bone, or your butcher can do this for you.
When buying meat, buy the best you can find. While you can buy organic in the supermarket, it will not be a patch on extensively raised meat from a good butcher. If you can get organic, local extensively raised meat, great, if not, get the best you can find. Don’t worry about the price, a pound of good meat will go twice as far as a pound of ordinary meat.
- A bulb of garlic, unpeeled
- Fresh rosemary
Get your oven up to temperature. From getting to know your oven, you should know how long it takes. Get it up as hot as possible. Put the rosemary and garlic in a roasting tin or tray – I use a deep cast iron Le Creuset roaster. Slash the meat a little, mainly where you can see the fat then rub the meat with a little olive oil and add salt and pepper. Place the meat on top of the rosemary and garlic and put some more rosemary and garlic over the meat. Cover it all with tin foil and make sure it is tight to the roasting pan. Put in the oven and as soon as you have closed the door, turn the oven down to gas 3/170c/325f and cook for 3-4 hours.
When done, remove the meat from the tray and cover the meat with foil. Place it somewhere warm, because it’s time to make gravy. Roast meat should always have a gravy or sauce. You are going to need:
- 1 tablespoon flour
- A pint of hot chicken or vegetable stock (I will cover making stocks at a later time)
- 2 heaped tablespoons capers, rinsed and chopped
- A bunch of fresh mint, leaves picked and stalks discarded then chopped
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Pour off as much fat as you can from the roasting tin and remove the rosemary, but leave the garlic. Add the flour and mix, getting all the sticky bits from the bottom of the pan, and mash up the garlic. Add the chicken stock and mix – I whisk – it will become thick gravy very quickly and you don’t want lumps. Add the chopped capers. The gravy should be very hot now, so turn down the heat. Just before it is ready to serve add the mint and red wine vinegar.
The meat will not need carved, more pulled apart. It should be so tender you should be able to pull the bone out – careful, it will be hot, use tongs. Pull the meat to pieces and put on its serving tray.
You can serve this with any vegetables you like. When I have roast meat I always have roast potatoes, carrots, swede and depending on what else I have some choices from cabbage, parsnips, brussel sprouts, cauli, broccoli, kale, roasted leek, onion or shallots.
Serve with a good bottle of red wine and enjoy it. Enjoy it again the next day when you make shepherd’s pie (to follow).
Comments
Sheperds pie is one of my favourite ways of using up roast lamb, hogget or mutton. With the left over gravy and meat from the roast shoulder, and left over vegitbles if you have any plus some mashed potatoe and an onion, you can make a great sheperds pie.
Ingrediants
Left over roast lamb (refrigerated)
Left over gravy (refrigerated) and a little water
Enough potatoes to make mashed potatoe to cover plus milk, butter and 2 egg yolks
Worcester sauce
1 onion
1 carrot grated
1 clove of garlic, minced
Tomatoe ketchup
Ground nut oil
Salt and black pepper
Take the lamb and cut it. You dont want chunks, you want to near mince it. Slice you onion and add to a little oil in a gently heated frying pan. You are looking to soften the onions. Turn up the heat, keep the onions moving so they dont brown or burn. Add the lamb – you want the heat to get some good flavours developing on the outside of the meat. Add the salt and pepper. Cook it through – you will probably get a brown coating on the bottom of you pan, when you get this, add your garlic, carrot, worceter sauce (I would use a desert spoon full if making a sheperds pie for two) and half as much tomatoe ketchup. It adds a good tang to the flavour. Allow these ingrediants to cook in for a few minutes.
Boil your kettle and add some boiling water to the gravy, as the liklyhood is that it is set. Bring it back to life and add to the pan, stiring it in. Allow this to simmer while you mash your potatoes.
You should have peeled, chunked and boiled your potatoes. When they are ready, drain them and leave them to lose as much water / steam as possible, but dont let them get cold. Mash them with a potatoe masher, adding butter and a little milk – do not add as much as you normally would, you want a rather thick consistancy. Beat the egg yolks and add these continuing to mash. If you had any left over swede or carrots from the day before, you can add these and mash in.
Pour the contents of the frying pan into a warmed oven proof dish and then settle mashed potatoe on top. You want a nice, even layer of potatoe, not big sunken clumps, it must ‘float’ on top of the meat. Run a folk over the potatoe several times to create ridges – this gives a greater surface area for the heat to work on, creating the crunchy top you want.
Place under a hot grill and keep an eye on it. You want the top browned, but not burned. When it is ready, use a very large spoon to remove – you idealy want to plate it up with the meat on the bottom and potatoe on top. Serve with something green – savoy cabbage is one of my favourites and carrots.
Do not put cheese on top of it. That is cottage pie, and that is made with beef.
I should have probably started off with this, seeing as it is normally the most basic thing to roast; also, I am willing to bet more people roast chickens than other meat.
Again, you should buy the best chicken you can afford. I usually spend £8-£13 on a chicken, depending on where it is from and how large it is. For the following recipe, take it that is a large organic / pastured bird. With factory farmed birds, these can seem larger (particularly the breast area) before cooking, but you will see the meat deflate more. Usually, the legs are less well developed and this is the meat where the flavour is. I don’t get why people are so interested in chicken breast and not the rest of the bird.
On a side note, try boning out a leg and thigh and then cooking it – no bones to put off those that done like them – it will be a revelation for those that do not normally eat leg / thigh.
Take all that elasticated string from the chicken and open the legs up so the cavity opens up – if the cavity is more open, your chicken will cook better. Check for any feathers or quills that have been left behind and remove them, but don’t get too anal about it. Snip off the wing tips and reserve. Check that the giblets are not in the bird. Wash the chicken in cold running water and then pat dry with a clean tea towel or kitchen paper. Put some salt on the skin, then some blobs of butter.
You may be thinking, why not put the salt on top of the butter? If you did, as the butter melts, the butter and salt will run off. If you put the salt on first, it will stick to the skin.
Put the bird in a large roasting pan on a rack and pour around a pint of boiling water from the kettle in the tray – the roasting rack must hold all of the chicken over the water, it must not be in it. Cover well with tin foil and put in your pre heated oven at 210C/410F / gas 6. You will keep the oven that hot for 20 minutes, after that, turn it down to 160C/320F/ gas 3. Cook for 1 hour.
Depending on the size of the bird, it may or may not be done after the hour. Take it out and check it. If you have a meat thermometer, great, stick it in the breast at the deepest point and stick it in the thigh at the deepest point. You are looking for around 80C / 180 F. Although I do own a meat thermometer, I test my skewering the bird deep in the thigh and checking the juice runs clear. I also put the skewer to my lip and can tell from how hot the skewer is if the chicken is done or near to done. It won’t be fully done by now, so I put it back in the oven for the skin to crisp up. This usually takes 15-20 minutes.
Take the chicken out of the oven and tip so any juices in the cavity run into the bottom of the roasting tin. Wrap the chicken back up in foil. Leave it to rest, breast side down while you make the gravy. Your roasting pan should have some lovely buttery chickeney hot liquid in it.
For the gravy, heat the meat juices, adding the wing tips, bring up to the boil. Taste it and see what it needs and if it needs any extras. Put 2 tsps of corn flour in to a cup or glass and add just enough cold water to cover, and then mix it up. You want it the consistency of just a little thicker than milk. Add this mixture to the juices, whisking all the time.
The juices must be boiling before you add the cornflower. Turn down the heat and taste again to add in salt. You may have to add a little stock – which I will go onto later when I make stock, concentrated stock and stock for quick gravy.
Carve your chicken - I carve off the breast and cut each one in to two or three pieces, carve the legs off taking as much meat from the body as possible and I also get what I call the 'olives' from the chicken - they are probably the nicest part - they are located on the chickens back, next to where the wing joins the body, in their own bony cavity - you will need to use your finger to push these out. I normally eat them on the spot as cooks perks.
You can get more fancy and add any herbs you want to the bird while it is cooking. Taragon, garlic, chives, thyme and marjoram are all good, as is two halves of lemon in the cavity. Once you have the basics cracked, experiment.
WTF are you talking about? Truss the bird!!!!!!
This is the only roast chicken recipe you will ever need. Courtesy of Thomas Keller. Tried and TRUTH.
Mon Poulet Rôti
One 2- to 3-pound farm-raised chicken
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons minced thyme (optional)
Unsalted butter
Dijon mustard
PreparationPreheat the oven to 450°F. Rinse the chicken, then dry it very well with paper towels, inside and out. The less it steams, the drier the heat, the better.
Salt and pepper the cavity, then truss the bird. Trussing is not difficult, and if you roast chicken often, it's a good technique to feel comfortable with. When you truss a bird, the wings and legs stay close to the body; the ends of the drumsticks cover the top of the breast and keep it from drying out. Trussing helps the chicken to cook evenly, and it also makes for a more beautiful roasted bird.
Now, salt the chicken—I like to rain the salt over the bird so that it has a nice uniform coating that will result in a crisp, salty, flavorful skin (about 1 tablespoon). When it's cooked, you should still be able to make out the salt baked onto the crisp skin. Season to taste with pepper.
Place the chicken in a sauté pan or roasting pan and, when the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken in the oven. I leave it alone—I don't baste it, I don't add butter; you can if you wish, but I feel this creates steam, which I don't want. Roast it until it's done, 50 to 60 minutes. Remove it from the oven and add the thyme, if using, to the pan. Baste the chicken with the juices and thyme and let it rest for 15 minutes on a cutting board.
Remove the twine. Separate the middle wing joint and eat that immediately. Remove the legs and thighs. I like to take off the backbone and eat one of the oysters, the two succulent morsels of meat embedded here, and give the other to the person I'm cooking with. But I take the chicken butt for myself. I could never understand why my brothers always fought over that triangular tip—until one day I got the crispy, juicy fat myself. These are the cook's rewards. Cut the breast down the middle and serve it on the bone, with one wing joint still attached to each. The preparation is not meant to be super elegant. Slather the meat with fresh butter. Serve with mustard on the side and, if you wish, a simple green salad. You'll start using a knife and fork, but finish with your fingers, because it's so good.