Please talk to me about roast meat!!

[CuppaTeaJanice]

At the age of 35, I have only cooked three roast dinners in my life ! It would be lovely to have a roast more often, but I really don't know where to start, so hopefully someone can give me some advice?

What I would like to know is...

What cuts of meat give good value (ie amount of edible meat per £)? Are cheaper cuts mainly bone, fat etc., so not as cheap as they seem?

Are any of the supermarkets particularly good for meat? We have all the big 4 in our town so can go to any.

What is generally best value - lamb, beef, pork or chicken, or any other type of meat?

I think Morrisons is usually quite good. Really you want a butchers though they will tell you what's good and how to cook it. I usually get topside of beef for Sunday roast or leg of lamb. Cheaper cuts need slower cooking but can be just as good. Rolled shoulder of lamb has more fat but slowly cooked the fat melts in to the meat giving great flavour. Brisket of beef also needs slow cooking. A good chicken is expensive now - you can get a crap one for very little but tbh I wouldn't feed my dcs that sort of meat. The only time we have pork is in a casserole but again that is fairly cheap.

One of the nicest, most cost-efficient roasts you can do is a gammon. A half gammon joint, for example, is all meat, no waste and doesn't shrink much on cooking. Equally lovely cold, of course. I pre-boil mine before trimming off the skin, applying a simple sugar/mustard glaze and then roasting off in the oven.

Boned stuffed and rolled belly pork or rolled shoulder of lamb are quite economical cuts. You should avoid meat that has too large quantities of fat but, as was mentioned earlier, don't be worried about meat that has some fat running through it... this makes for a juicy roast.

Thankyou - you're making me feel really hungry now!!

I am just resting a boned and rolled shoulder of pork from Asda. It was 1.7kg for less than £3.50! More than enough to feed our family of five. I've tasted it and it's very tender and yummy!

Cuts which are fattier such as shoulder tend to be cheaper but they also have much more flavour as fat is what flavours meat. You can slow roast shoulder joints easily too and a whole shoulder of bone in lamb isn't overly expensive and would feed the average family for two or three meals easily.

Chickens are good value, even free range ones. You can roast it and then use the leftovers in salads, sandwiches etc.

Overall, pork and chicken tend to be cheapest, but some cuts of beef are reasonable too (like brisket) and so can some lamb be.

I really recommend the Hugh Fearnley W book "Meat"! Has some really good, clear instructions on cooking loads of different cuts, joints etc., including the cheap bits. My husband swears by it.

Grumpla is right Hugh Fearnley W book is the business on roasting.

Cheap cuts are fatty - however you need some fat to baste the meat while it roasts and make it tender, and you can make a very nice dish out of a cheap fatty joint if your family are not too fussy. (Like wot mine are.)

After seeing Hugh FW programme on the nutritional value of different kinds of chicken I ceased to buy anything except free-range, even if it is pricey. Even at free-range, though, a chicken is the cheapest traditional roast you can do. I use Delia Smith's roast chicken recipe, and sometimes her fast-roast chicken with lemon - which is very tasty.

In the autumn, a cheap alternative is pheasant although DP and DD dislike it if too well hung and make faces if they come across lead shot in their portion. (Plebs!)

Roast meat is easy peasy once you have got a few basic tips in your head:

Most meats, 20/30 minutes at high heat for the Hugh FW sizzle, then the rest of the time at lower (if using Hugh FW and wanting well done - adjust oven temperature and times as he seems to be geared to an aga and pink meat).

Chicken - most time at lower temp, final 20 minutes at high sizzle to brown the skin.

All meat needs to rest for 10/20 minutes after coming out of the oven; this allows the juices to sink back into the meat making it more tender and easier both to carve and eat.

Beef - roll the joint in dry mustard powder and flour before roasting.

Lamb - insert little bits of garlic and rosemary in slits in meat.

How to get perfect crackling - make sure you baste the joint regularly while cooking. As soon as it is cooked, carve the crackling off with as little fat stuck underneath as possible and set it aside to dry out while the meat is resting.

If you want best value meat, find a good local butcher and go regularly. I am greedy so I have 3 regular butchers I go to. They all have free recipe cards and will advise me on how to cook different cuts of meat in different ways. They are totally cool about me asking for bargain cuts, as they are proper butchers who are used to people expecting value in their food. My main favourite butchers to whom I have been going for years will often put in extra sausages etc, I think they just really like people who love meat and are not too snobby to ask their expert advice about it. (I have a bit of a flirt with them as well, not for the sausage! I just like butchers .)

There is a science to roasting meat, even if a successful result seems like pure artistry. I roast quite a lot, and my obsessions are-

• getting the right cut
• getting good quality raw meat
• calculating the cooking time right
• calculating the heat right.

As others have said above, the best roasting cuts will have some fat in them. The fat renders during the cooking process, and keeps the meat moist.

So, pork shoulder is good. Pork loin is bad (and expensive), because it has just about no fat and dries out. Lamb shoulder is good for the same reason, lamb leg less so. Mutton can be fantastic, but it requires careful cooking or it ends up like an old boot.

Buy from a butcher, who can advise you what cut will do best. My butcher sells rolled beef for roasting, silverside I think, but he puts layers of fat in as well, and the results are lovely.

Getting an oven thermometer and a meat thermometer is a good idea: they will help you to know when your meat is done.

Find a table giving meat cuts, weights and recommended cooking times.

Meat on the bone will cook more quickly than meat not on the bone.

Don't roast widdly piddly little pieces of meat: I roast at least 2.5kg at once. You can eat the leftovers during the week like our grandparents did. This is particularly important if you want to get decent crackling (NB - Politixmum, thanks for the tip - I will try that next time to see how it works. I normally score mine and put salt over).

With beef, it's helpful to start at a high temp, ie, 200 degrees, and then reduce: it gives the meat a particularly toothsome smell and flavour.

BTW, can anyone tell the difference between British lamb and NZ lamb?

Wow! Loads of great tips and info here. My friend is always talking about a butcher in town who sells 'specialist' meat - kangaroo, ostrich, zebra, so maybe I'll visit him to see what he has!

Off to Amazon to look for the HFW 'Meat' book now!!

Thankyou!

Toadinthehole there sure is a difference between lamb from different locations. I live in South Wales, where the local salt marsh lamb is de riguer - it does have a sweet tasty flavour to it. Also I prefer scottish aberdeen angus beef to the local Welsh black gold.

One of my Australian friends came with me to my butcher's to buy lamb chops once, and asked: 'Is this lamb local?' Quick as a flash the butcher said, 'Oh no, it comes from Swansea' (about an hour down the road!).

CuppaTeaJanice,

I wouldn't roast ostrich! It's very stringy and is best cooked for ages and ages in wine.

Kangaroo is as good as beef. Actually, the best 'specialist' meat I have ever eaten (which includes crocodile) was kudu. A kudu is a kind of antelope and it's meat is quite like venison. I'd be surprised if you could get it fresh in the UK thought.