Sat­ur­day: PIGSTRAVAGANZA. This is not optional.

Roast din­ners have become a reg­u­lar occur­rence in my house, to which guests are always invited. I get asked occa­sion­ally about recipes for my roast, and my short answer is: there isn’t one. Roast din­ners, I feel, are much more about tim­ing than culi­nary skill. All that really mat­ters to pro­duce a suc­cess­ful roast din­ner is to plan ahead and make sure every­thing comes together at the right time to be served.

Here’s my guide to recre­at­ing my roast din­ner.  The first sec­tion lists the pos­si­ble ingre­di­ents, how they’re pre­pared, and how long they take to cook.  The sec­ond sec­tion is inspired by my par­ents’ Christ­mas Day check­list, which they use to make sure every­thing hap­pens at the right time.

Ingre­di­ents

The cen­tre­piece of the roast din­ner is the meat.  Assum­ing you’re not veg­gie.  Dif­fer­ent meats require dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures and cook­ing times.  If you have extra time, red meats can be made even more ten­der by start­ing their cook­ing at a low tem­per­a­ture, cov­ered with foil, then hav­ing the tem­per­a­ture brought up to cook the rest of the ingre­di­ents and the foil being removed near the end.  If roast­ing pork with this method, remove the foil long enough before the end that you get good crack­ling — half an hour or so.

PIGSTRAVAGANZA, bitches.

I score the sur­face of the meat and rub salt into it before cook­ing, and always put it straight into a hot oiled roast­ing dish in a hot oven.  Meat needs 5 min­utes or so to rest (cov­ered in foil) between being taken from the oven and being served.

• Chicken: 20 min­utes + 20 min­utes per lb, 200 C
• Pork & Lamb: 30 min­utes + 30 min­utes per lb, 200 C
• Beef: 40 min­utes + 40 min­utes per lb, 150 C.  Adjust cook­ing times of other ingre­di­ents due to the low temperature.

And the rest:

• Pota­toes: I wash, but not peel, pota­toes.  Cut into large pieces, 1/4 or 1/6 of a bak­ing potato, and par­boil for 10 min­utes.  Start pota­toes off in cold water, bring to the boil, then start tim­ing once they’re boil­ing.  After par­boil­ing, drain them and put them in a hot oiled roast­ing dish for an hour.  I use one bak­ing potato per person.
• “Proper Size” Pigs in Blan­kets: I make full-size pigs in blan­kets by wrap­ping a nor­mal sausage with a nor­mal rasher of bacon.  These take 20 min­utes to cook, on a bak­ing tray or in a roast­ing dish along­side the rest.
• Stuff­ing: I cheat and use pack­ets of dry stuff­ing.  Instruc­tions are on the side of the pack, but it should take about 5 min­utes in hot water to turn the pow­der into actual stuff­ing, then 20 min­utes to cook.
• York­shire Pud­dings: I’m banned from mak­ing these in our house, because my bat­ter always man­ages to be too stodgy despite my best attempts.  Due to this curse, I buy frozen ones from the super­mar­ket.  They’re pre-cooked, and only take a cou­ple of minutes.
• Swede: Cut into chunks and boil for 30–40 min­utes (start­ing from cold, as with pota­toes).  Mash with but­ter to serve.
• Car­rots: Cut into strips or rounds, 20 min­utes from cold to boil, 35 to steam.
• Run­ner beans: 10 min­utes to boil, 15 to steam.
• Broad beans: 15 min­utes to boil, 25 to steam.
• Sprouts: Are the devil’s food, and you should not ever cook them.
• Peas: 5 min­utes to boil, 8 to steam.
• Gravy: Quick.  I make gravy with the water from the veg­eta­bles (healthy!) and the juices from the meat (much less so), and Bisto granules.

Tim­ing Chart

This is a tim­ing chart for some of the most com­mon ingre­di­ents, to eat at 7pm.

• 5:15 Oven on at 200 C.  Oil in one oven dish, put in the oven to heat.
• 5:25 Take a 3 lb chicken, score the skin, rub with salt and oil.
• 5:30 Chicken in the oven.  Wash and chop potatoes.
• 5:40 Pota­toes on to boil.
• 6:00 Pota­toes should have had 10 min­utes on the boil.  Put more oiled dishes in the oven, drain the pota­toes, then when the dishes are hot, fill them with pota­toes.  Turn the pota­toes until they’re cov­ered with oil, and put them in the oven.
• 6:10 Have a drink.  While there’s a lull in cook­ing, pre­pare ingre­di­ents in advance.  Chop the car­rots, wrap the pigs in their blan­kets, and make the stuffing.
• 6:30 Put the car­rots on to boil (reduce to a sim­mer once they get there).  Put another oiled dish in the oven, or a bak­ing tray.  Turn the potatoes.
• 6:35 If your drink of choice has been cider, pour a bit over the chicken.  (Also good with pork, not so much with beef!)  Add a table­spoon of honey on top of the chicken so that it melts all over it.
• 6:40 Put the pigs and stuff­ing in the new dish / on the new tray.
• 6:50 Take the chicken out, cover with foil and leave to stand.
• 6:55 Add the peas to the car­rot saucepan.
• 7:00 Carve the chicken, serve all ingre­di­ents.  Once the veg­eta­bles are served (or before, if every­one wants gravy) add the chicken juices to that pan.  Grad­u­ally stir in gravy gran­ules until you reach the desired consistency.
• 7:05 Pour gravy for every­one, have another drink, and tuck in!