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Tag: Cooking

Roasted

Close Meat-ing, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

This is not my roast, Jen made this fine repast. I don’t make my roast the same way she does, she’s a bit heavy on onions and lets the meat dry out a bit sometimes.

When I make a roast it’s a simple affair:

Defrost roast
Place roast in roasting vessel with a mixture of several cups of water, a few tablespoons of garlic powder, generous helpings of white and black pepper and a helping of generic steak spice.

Ensure that you drench the meat in said mixture and that said mixture is mixed into water. Turn meat “Fattiest side up” and generously coat with black and white pepper on fat.

If you are feeling adventurous, add instant coffee to the water, enough for two cups of coffee to your taste.

Start to heat the meat (covered) at 300 degrees in the center of your oven.

After about 2 hours remove from heat, increase oven temperature to 350 degrees. Replace any lost water and add 1/2 cup of vinegar.

Return vessel to oven and let cook, check meat after about 1 hour and ensure that it has not dried, add water as needed.

At the 3 and a half hour mark (since you started) add potatoes and vegetables. Cover with water and let cook. [Again, if you are into trying new things, add hot peppers and spiced vinegar]

Allow the water to boil down (until the vegetables are mostly uncovered) in vessel, meat should pull apart easily with fork.

When the meat is ready and potatoes are soft enough, pull from oven and serve.

The meat should be tender and moist, you may turn the leavings in the vessel into soup or gravy.

Chicken Soup From Scratch

Chicken Soup Mid Render
It’s very satisfying for me to turn the remains of a roasted chicken into soup. It’s like recycling. The Bones are a problem, but some filtering and judicious picking at the soup will remove the majority of the bones. I cook the carcass overnight with some pepper and salt and in the morning I reduce the temperature a little in order to remove what bones I can.

After the bones are gone I add a little more pepper and salt to taste then a touch of fragrant grating cheese (any hard cheese should do) just enough to flavor the soup and no more. I increase the temperature to about 1/3 and let it simmer. I add water periodically to avoid too much reduction and concentration.

Once the Soup is hot and simmering again I add the vegetables; but no potatoes.

About an hour before serving, I add the raw potatoes. The reason for the delay is to avoid the Potatoes picking up too much taste from the soup as the Potatoes will absorb the fat and flavor as it cooks from raw. You can avoid this by pre-boiling the potatoes.

Plated SoupThe soup is made of what I can find around the kitchen:

1 Cooked Chicken Carcass, Breasts removed for another dinner
The fat and drippings from the roasted chicken is also preserved for the soup.
1 Cup of Carrots
1 Cup of Peas
6 small potatoes, peeled.
A couple tablespoons of pepper
1 tablespoon of salt
1-3 tablespoons of Hard Grated “Fragrant” cheese.