Make a ridiculously juicy and tender roast with the Essteele roasting pan
Who doesn’t love a delicious roast dinner? It’s the ultimate in comfort food on a Sunday afternoon, and the best when shared with family and friends. And with a lovely bottle of red wine of course! Our food expectations have drastically increased in recent years: long gone are the days of sad, grey hunks of meat and two soggy, boiled vegetables! The way to up your roast game is to add beautiful texture, colour, and flavour to your meal with some lovely add-ons: spices, sauces, herbs, crumb topping, or seeds.
In this post I want to provide some simple tips to up your roast game, so you can make show-stopping meals your friends and family will love. PLUS, I show how you can take a beautiful roast dinner and make easy meals throughout the week using the leftovers. See our recipe here for a beautiful Lemon and Harissa Roast Lamb Shoulder with Green Tahini Sauce.
3 Top Tips to Up Your Roasting Game
1. Fast or Slow?
The main event: starting with the meat, the first thing you need to determine is whether you are going to roast it fast or slow. The best way to figure this out is how much fat or connective tissue the muscle of the meat has.
Joints with bones or a lot of fat running through such as shoulder and leg will need a long and slow roast (I’m talking 3 or more hours. Our lamb shoulder took 5.5 hrs). Note: You’re aiming to slowly break down the tissues of the meat until it is falling apart.
Leaner pieces like loin, chops or most white meat (except turkey) and fish will benefit from a higher heat and faster cooking time. Note: You’re aiming to only cook it until it’s just done in the middle.
2. Eat the Rainbow
Having the right combination of vegetables can make or break your roast dinner. You don’t need to worry about catering something extra for vegetarian friends or family when you have a well thought out selection of vegetables. Aim for bright colours, and different ways of cooking each vegetable dish in your selection will provide pleasing variety. Here are some wonderful combination ideas:
- crunchy roast potatoes along with a delicious corn salad
- cauliflower cheese with lemon and garlic greens
- potato bake with a shredded brussel sprouts slaw
- spiced roast sweet potato wedges with a pea and edamame bean salad
- roasted beetroot and fennel with cannellini bean puree
- roasted tender stem broccoli with carrot and harissa mash
The possibilities are endless! Flavour roasted vegetables when they come out of the oven (if salted before cooking they will sweat excess moisture) with a dusting of your favourite spice mix. Finish with seeds, a crumble of feta or parmesan, and chopped herbs.
3. Let’s Talk About Sauce
Please banish gloopy instant gravy from your memory, and instead choose a sauce for your roast. Truly it takes things to another level. It might even be a flavoured butter or a chutney-style condiment. Some ideas are Red Wine Sauce, Café de Paris Butter, Green Tahini Dressing or these 4 sauces we wrote about for the classic Aussie BBQ – equally fantastic with a roast.
How Essteele Makes Roasting Easier
The non-stick roaster twin pack from Italian manufacturer Essteele is a fantastic addition to every cook’s collection of pans. So clever to package them as a set of two – not only is this great value but is equally helpful in the kitchen. Really, these two pans are all you need in the kitchen for easy family meals.
I’ll admit I hadn’t heard of Italian brand Essteele before. However, since trying the Essteele pans I’ve been just as impressed with their quality, durability, and performance. Not to mention their excellent versatility! I even baked my son’s 6th birthday cake in the smaller pan. (Note: to make a perfect sheet pan cake in the Essteele roaster, simply triple any recipe designated for one 20cm x 20cm cake.) I used this recipe from The Stay at Home Chef, which is already in the correct quantities!
I have found the super safe, PFOA free non-stick to be amongst the best I have ever tested. Nothing sticks to the bottom – even salmon skin! This means you can use less oil, whilst achieving beautifully crispy, crunchy results. The pans are even dishwasher safe, although I typically tend to never wash my non-stick pans in the dishwasher – they are simply so easy to clean!
Next Read: Lemon and Harissa Roast Lamb Shoulder with Spiced Sweet Potato Wedges
