GourmetGuys

Discover you how to make a pan sauce with the flavours in your roasting tray. No more packet sauces full of preservatives!

This cooking tip is incredibly easy to do, you don’t need to buy packet sauces that are full of salt and a variety of other colourants, flavourants and preservatives. You can make your own recipe! It’ll work whether you are roasting chicken, lamb, beef or pork.

The drippings from your roast are lying on the bottom of the roasting tray, they’re pretty concentrated too so have a whole whack of flavour in them. Instead of sending the roasting tray directly to the sink rather extract all that flavour first to make your sauce or gravy.

If you didn’t roast any onions along with the meat you can add some chopped onion or shallots, a bit of pepper and some herbs to add more flavour to your sauce. Use a bay leaf, sage, thyme or rosemary, depending on what it is that you’re cooking. Pour in some chicken stock, a little red wine or vinegar and de-glaze the pan over a low to medium heat, it will still be quite hot after being in the oven for a while. The de-glazing process also lifts anything that is stuck to the bottom of the pan so it will make it easier to clean later.

Allow the sauce to reduce if you’d like a jus or if you want a thicker texture to your sauce, add a little flour or butter. I cannot stress the little part enough, if you put in too much flour you will end up with a stodgy porridge type thing that nobody will want to touch.

One final word of warning, the roasting tray has been in the oven for at least 35 minutes or more, depending on what you were roasting. It is going to be hot so use a dish cloth or mittens when you touch it, believe me when I say that I’m talking from experience.

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Here’s a little trick for flavouring your meat and that is to soak it in a brine before cooking.

This applies to practically any meat that you are cooking for dinner. You add some salt, sugar and a variety of herbs & spices to a pot of simmering water and allow it to dissolve. Then transfer the flavoured water across to a larger bowl of cold water. You want the water to be luke warm and not hot otherwise the meat will poach. Add the meat to the brine and leave it for a few hours to absorb all the flavour.

If you have meat that you need to defrost you can pop it into the brine too as sitting in the water will reduce the time it takes to defrost.

You can use this recipe for success in the kitchen for chicken, fish, lamb, beef and pork. At Christmas time you could stick a whole Turkey into a bucket of brine if you wish. It will really bring out some great flavours and leave you with a crispy skin.

Just pat the meat dry before you begin to cook it to get rid of any excess moisture.

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