Cookbook for gaining confidence cooking meat, esp roasts?

[TheLightGetsIn]

I am fairly rubbish with roasts. I end up frantically googling recipes and going round and round the internet every time, and usually still getting it wrong. Can anyone recommend a "classic" cookbook that is good for giving you confidence with roasting meat? By classic I guess I mean an old fashioned one that teaches you the basics about cooking temperatures and times per weight - e.g. "chicken is a lean meat that needs added fat like butter rubbed over it before roasting, but duck has enough fat on it so doesn't need extra". "Lamb needs to be roasted for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C, then at 160 degrees for 20 minutes per 450g, then left for 10 minutes with foil over it before carving" or similar.

The trouble I find with most recipes on the internet is that they ask you to cook the roast according to a list of very specific ingredients, or tell you to start with a joint of pork weighing exactly 2kg or whatever, which means that I have no idea how to adjust cooking time when my joint weighs only 1.2kg.

Delia.

Which Delia book?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat book is excellent.

Is this any good?
www.jamieoliver.com/features/guide-to-roasting-meat

The Good Housekeeping Cookbook

Aside from a recipe book (but Delia - Simply, or Nigella How to Eat are good starting points) the best suggestion I can make for roasting meat is to buy a meat thermometer. They have taken all the anxiety out of roasting meat for me. Each oven has its own 'character' and coupled with your eating tastes any recipe can only be a very good guide.
I just plunge the thermometer in at certain points in cooking and get an immediate feedback on how 'ready' the meat is.

Good luck!

Apologies - the Delia book is "How to Cook"

Delia is your bible

"Complete Cookery Course"

Thanks for all the replies!

For those who have the Delia Complete Cookery Course/How to Cook (think they are the same thing, though not entirely sure??), googling suggests it's book 2 that has the meat section. Is that right?

Meat thermometer is a good suggestion except that at the moment I don't know what temperature I would be looking for so still need the cookbook to tell me that basic info first!

That Jamie Oliver chart would be perfect for me except that he's still doing that thing of telling you only what to do with a 2kg joint with bone in or similar, rather than telling you the formula per weight (unless I'm missing the info somewhere else on the chart). Plus he doesn't include anything other than the most common ones - no mutton, duck or similar, which I'd also like to gain confidence with.

I will also check out the Hugh F-W and Good Housekeeping books, thanks.

Delia's Complete Cookery Course gives you the timings per pound/hundred grams etc, temperature, resting times etc.

My MIL bought me a copy many years ago, and I still use it most weeks. It's not fancy, but it's 100% reliable.

I'd second the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall meat book. It has everything you are after and a lot more.

@DustOffYourHighestHopes I second that!
The Good Housekeeping Cook book is very good indeed.

@DonaldTrumpsChopper the Complete Cookery Course seems to come in three volumes. Is it vol 2 that has that information? Looking on Amazon, vol 2 seems to be the one with the meat section. It does sound perfect for what I'm after, but I probably don't need the whole three volumes if the info you mention is contained in just one of them.

TheLight mine is one a single book with all three volumes. Honestly, it covers everything.

Not a book but the best thing I’ve found for getting roasts right is a meat thermometer- I kept overcooking before I got it, to make sure it was done, and now I have the confidence to get them right.

Right, I'm going to get both the Delia and the Hugh F-W ones I think.

I think I may actually have a meat thermometer somewhere, but have never had a clue how to use it (in the sense of how to use it to tell whether the meat is done or not, or done to the right degree of pinkness if lamb etc).

Delia is good and I think you might be able to YouTube or perhaps borrow from the library the episode you want. Nigella’s How to cook is also good and she is more forgiving in tone.

Have a good look at your meat thermometer. Mine has temperatures and labels (ie beef rare, chicken well done etc).

Delia is great for properly explaining things and her recipes work. I asked for the Complete Cookery Course when I was a twenty year old student and still use it nearly thirty years later. She is totally reliable. And she has a website, Delia Online. You can probably get her books in good condition secondhand online.

OP here's a Smith's Complete Illustrated Cookery Course, The Classic Edition [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A2O9LFY/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_eOscEbHHYGK82?tag=mumsnetforu03-21 link]] to a hardback version of the Complete Cookery Course at a great price. My copy is the paperback.

Rats - link didn't work properly, but you get the idea.

I cook a lot of cheaper roasts. They are much more forgiving. For example, shoulder of lamb or pork I sizzle first, then put a bit of stock round them, cover and leave In the oven on about 125c for most of the day. If I cook beef, I like Silverside and again slow cook it.

Most meat thermometers have the meats marked on them so you know it's x degrees for chicken, x for beef, etc.

I second the Delia recommendation - especially her roast potatoes.

I second the HFW meat book, it is fantastic, and full of actual information, not just recipes. The fish book is great too.

The complete cookery course came out in the 80s, maybe 70s. It's different to 'how to Cook' which was tied in to a tv show in... the early 2000s I think? The complete cookery course was sort of an 'everything the accomplished housewife would need to know' type book: lots of the recipes are maybe a bit dated but everything in it works.

How to cook was I think inspired by young people who wouldn't have learnt anything about cooking at home, the thre volumes are themed, and sort of inspired by what you need to master to be able to cook, so book 1 literally starts with how to boil an egg.

This is all based on my mum owning both but it's been nearly a decade since I read either. She had an early 90s version of the complete cookery course, I don't know if it's been updated since.