Roasting Beef and Veal

Roasting is a wonderful cooking process for larger pieces of meat, producing a tempting smell as the joint sizzles in the oven. The most important thing to remember if you want to produce a perfect roast is that it needs care and attention. All too often a roasted joint is treated as a convenience food: brought straight out of the refrigerator and put, unseasoned, into the oven for an allotted time during which it is forgotten – this will do nothing for the meat except to cook it.

Meat should always sit at room temperature for two hours or more before roasting. Because both ovens and the meat itself are unpredictable you must never rely entirely on timing charts and suggested temperatures – you must check constantly during the cooking and adapt timing and heat, if necessary. I invariably like to start the meat off in the hottest part of the oven for 10 minutes and then lower the heat for the remainder of the cooking, somtimes lowering it even twice.