British Sunday roast dinner

Cafe Society
41

The whole dish is called “pot roast”, and consists of meat (beef, pork, fowl), and peeled and cut up potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery. Usually I put some broth and/or wine in the roasting pan, too, not much, just enough to keep everything moist. If I’m roasting a whole fowl, I stuff some of the onion and celery into the neck and vent cavities, instead of dressing.

I live in Texas, and so I usually only turn on the oven when it’s winter. Summertime is very hot here, and we have to run the air conditioning constantly, so we do a lot of grilling. Even spring and fall are warm weather seasons here. But there’s nothing that smells quite as welcoming as stepping in the front door and getting a whiff of a pot roast in the oven.

42

Ohhhhh - pot roast is very different. What you are doing isn’t roast tatties.

43

Proper roast potatoes need to be par-boiled for about five minutes first, have the water drained off, then dried in the pan for a couple of minutes before they go in the pan with the meat.

A ‘traditional’ Sunday roast at Faerie Towers consists of roast lamb or chicken with roast potatoes, peas (for him), parsnips or sprouts (for me), carrots and real gravy (made with gravy salt, gravy browning and cooked in the meat juices).

If we have roast beef, we’ll have Yorkshire puds as well, and if it’s roast chicken there might also be stuffing but you don’t have that with lamb or beef. See? Tradition is just what you make of it!

44

One reason why you would have roast and boiled is that if you do the traditional Sunday joint thing, you have a large piece of beef, all the family around.

Traditionally you roast in the meat tin, or better still, alongside the joint, however you can’t get all that many roasties around it, so if you relied only on roasties there just would not be enough to go around.

The boiled tattties, sometimes mashed, are the mainstay, and the couple of roasties each person gets are the treat - if they have been done correctly.

45

Oh…my…GAWD! This sounds absolutely fantastic! Like Lynn Bodoni, I’m in the hot-n-humid south…Alabama for me. So I avoid the oven as much as possible during the summer and fall until it cools off a bit. But just READING this made my mouth water! I would love, love, love a detailed, step-by-step recipe for making this meal. I can offer you a southern recipe in exchange…say, southern fried chicken? or pecan-crusted fish? or pecan pie or homemade biscuits (rolls, not cookies)? or cheese grits?

I know I can get recipes off the internet. But it’s just not the same as coming from someone who really knows how it’s supposed to look, taste, what goes with what, etc.

You know, I would love an entire thread where everyone contributes a “traditional” recipe (or better yet recipes for a whole meal) for their part of the world. Or has that been done before and I’ve just missed it…

46

That’s no problem - send me your email and I can get it together for you, and/or post it on here too.

47

Another case of a single language keeping us apart. The roast potatoes I have had in the UK are done with lots of fat/oil. They are sort of like US roasted vegetables, where you toss them in oil and them roast them on a cookie sheet. They are crispy on the edges. The potatoes you are talking about (I think) don’t get crispy, right?

48

My potatoes will get very soft, and they might crisp up around the edges a little bit, but not very much. They will cook in the meat juices and fat, but I don’t add additional fat at all. In fact, I’ve only roasted potatoes in oil once, and that was an experiment. My husband and I decided that they were OK, but not as good as either baked potatoes, or potatoes in a pot roast.

I have made a roast veggie dish, where I peel and cut up potatoes, onions, celery, and carrots, and then tossed them in chicken stock, and roasted them. Sometimes I’ll add a turnip, too. They come out a bit crispy on the edges, and very, very good. This is one of my daughter’s favorite dishes.

As a general rule, I don’t turn on the oven unless I’m going to make the complete meal in it.

49

Lancashire roots here…

The Sunday roast always had potatoes cooked along with the meat (usually beef), as well as boiled (often but not always mashed).
All the veg and potatoes not cooked around the meat, were put on to boil early in the day, thus having the shit cooked out of them.
It was all saved by huge helpings of Yorkshire Pudding.

memories…

50

I’m very late to this thread, but I am a roast dinner fanatic, and therefore feel the need to contribute: my Sunday roasts are, though I say it myself, sensational.

In keeping with the OP: I always do roast potatoes with whipped mashed potatoes. None of that new potato garbage.

My roasts invariably comprise:

The meat (often chicken but maybe a lump of slow-cooked beef)
Roast carrots
Roast parsnips
Steamed broccoli
Roast potato
Mashed potato
Yorkshire pud
Gravy
Bread sauce (if I’m feeling really gregarious)

My tips for prepping the above:

Oven at 175C (350F) the whole time.

Parboil the roasties for 10 mins, drain, agitate in the pan, douse with olive oil, dump into a roasting dish onto hot oil, then turn until each roastie has one flat side down. Shake herbes de Provence over the top. Slam in the oven for 30 minutes, then scrape them up with a palette knife and turn, and replace for 15 minutes.

Mash the shit out of the other potatoes before adding anything else. When they feel smooth, melt a huge knob of butter into them, whip with a hand whisk, season with salt and pepper then add 1-2 tablespoons of sour cream, and whip again. You can do this earlier as they reheat very well in the microwave.

Julienne the carrots and parsnips but make sure they are cut to a spear end, as this allows more caramelization of the sugars within, drop into a plastic food bag, pour in a couple glugs of oil and herbes de provence, and toss in the oil. Leave them to steep for a while. They only take 1/2 an hour to do, provided they’re spread out well enough on a roasting pan.

To make the bread sauce, stud a peeled onion with cloves, then simmer in enough milk to cover the onion in a small pan, for 2 hours or so. Strain it, add enough breadcrumbs to absorb all the liquid (less than you think initially because they take time to absorb it), then melt in a knob of butter and season with salt and pepper.

Let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes.

Finally, to make the gravy, I make a liquor first using a tablespoon or so of fruit jelly dissolved in a full glass of white wine, seasoned with pepper and a stock cube. I then add the meat juice stock to this (after I’ve de-fatted it), simmer and reduce for a while as the meat rests, then take off the heat and thicken with a bit of liquified corn starch.

Damn, my roasts are SO good. And I am arrogant, but you haveta taste one… :slight_smile:

51

As yet no-one has mentioned the ‘roast’ spuds you can buy frozen from most supermarkets.

They may be ok if you’re desperate but otherwise avoid them like the plague.

You cannot beat the real thing

52

Yes, dear old “Aunt Bessy” has a lot to answer for.

53

Ignorant Yank here - who the fuck is Delia and where does she get off telling people how to cook potatoes? :confused:

54

Delia Smith

55

ScareyFaerie, I finally figured out how to send a PM :smack:, so check your PM inbox. Sometimes I’m a technology dunce.

Aunt Bessy has FROZEN Yorkshire puddings? I want to learn to make Yorkshires some day, but using pre-made frozen never occurred to me. That seems kind of…I don’t know…un-British, somehow. No offense to “Aunt Bessy” intended, of course. I was just surprised seeing them on their website. Has anyone tried the frozen? Are they any good? Are they big sellers there? There’s no chance they’ll ever sell them here in Alabama - so I’m just asking this out of curiosity.

56

I hate to say it, (and will now be probably be drummed out of the regiment) but frozen Yorkshire puddings aren’t bad. They only take a couple of minutes to cook, you just pop them in the oven while you are carving the meat.

But I would never lower myself to use frozen mashed potato . There are limits you know!

57

They aren’t bad – they’re perfectly adequate. They’re also cheap, convenient, and reliable – using frozen yorkies means never having to suffer the heartbreak of failed puds. The same applies to frozen roast tatties: anyone who’s ever had to choke down a miserable, greasy, part-burnt, part-raw “roast potato” surely recognises there’s a good deal to be said for “adequate”.

By the same token, of course, they can never rise to the heights of gastronomic glory that the proper home-made article can attain.

58

As far as I’m concerned frozen yorkies are a godsend.

I couldn’t make my own if my life depended on it…believe me I’ve tried umpteen times

59

My mother consistently makes better yorkies than I do. We have been side by side in the kitchen making batter from the same recipe using the same ingredients and yet hers still come out better than mine.

I tried Aunt Bessie’s yorkies once and didn’t think much of them, they’ll do at a pinch but I would really rather have my less than stellar puds. As for frozen mash, that’s just an abomination.

60

Actually you DO appear to be something of an upstart,and a bit of a cad aswell!

But I have a friend(obviously not me as I’m a gentleman)who has used frozen roast potatoes and thought they were acceptable ,well for the servants at least.