Meal for Two: Sunday Roast

So, this is something that’s been bothering me for quite a while – the lack of decent recipes when preparing meals for one. I live by myself, so normally eat by myself. But meals for one are pretty boring, and repetitive (it’s difficult to get portions at the supermarket that are suitable for one), so I like to experiment.

But I’m not that creative, and I’m often busy – which is why I end up getting takeaways or ready meals fairly frequently, which is bad for my health and wallet – so I look up recipes on the Internet, but they’re often pretty fancy in terms of ingredients, and are for larger meals (families, etc), are expensive or take a long time to prepare.

So this series of blogs is inspired by Jamie Oliver’s “30 Minute Meals” series, but are designed for one (and occasionally two, when I’m visiting my girlfriend). They’re experimental (I’m not a chef, I’m a web developer!) and I disclaim all responsibility for if it goes wrong ;)

But the general rule of thumb for recipes I’m going to blog is this – they’re quick to prepare (although perhaps not as quick to cook), fairly healthy and not too exotic in terms of ingredients or equipment.

I’m of the opinion that cooking is an art, not a science (which took me a while to accept as a scientist), so I’m never exact in my measurements, just rough guidelines.

The first recipe here is going to break the “Meal for One” rule, as it’s for two (and not the healthiest being such a heavy meal – but have it for lunch and then you won’t need much for tea, maybe just some toast), but it’s a classic, always reminds me of growing up in Yorkshire, and is surprisingly easy to make – the typical English Sunday roast.

What you’ll need:

• A nice bit of beef – unfortunately most supermarkets sell family-size joints (Morrisons occasionally seems to be an exception!), so you’ll have to be lucky or go to the butcher counter if you shop at a big enough place. Or just accept you’re going to have roast beef sandwiches for lunch all week – 450g seems to be about right for two in my experience, with some left overs;


• Potatoes – I always make too much (<3 roast potatoes), but 3/4 seems to be about right (I’ll let you judge);


• A parsnip (optional);


• Veg – your choice, we normally go for a carrot and some broccoli;


• Bisto;


• Plain flour (at most 100g);


• An egg (large, and go free range);


• Some milk (about half a pint);


• A Yorkshire pudding tin (perhaps a bit exotic, but worth it to make this meal properly, and they’re dead cheap);


• A roasting tin (big enough for your meat and potatoes);


• A pan big enough for your potatoes;


• A jug (about a litre);


• A weighing scale;


• A slotted spoon;


• A colander (or cheat and fish things out of the pan with the slotted spoon);


• A spare plate (or chopping board) to carve the beef on;


• A whisk (or a fork).

Here’s a note about the beef – it’s very variable in quality, and you’ll find a considerable improvement by paying £2 more for a nicer bit. The quality of the beef makes or breaks this meal in my opinion, so it’s almost always worth to go a bit higher. Exactly how long your beef will take depends on the size of it. For medium, 25 minutes at 220ºC and then 25 minutes per 450g at 180ºC is a decent choice, so you may need to take longer to cook it based on this. Also, you could very easily replace beef with lamb or pork in this recipe, adjusting times etc appropriately.

Start with pre-heating the oven to 220ºC, and placing your meat into a roasting tin – don’t put it into the oven yet.

Peel the potatoes and then boil the kettle (enough to cover the potatoes in your pan), whilst the kettle is boiling, chop the potatoes into chunks based on how big you like your roast potatoes and then put them in a pan. When the kettle’s boiled, pour the water on the potatoes. If you’re making a roast around 450g in size, now’s the time to put it in the oven (otherwise you may need to do it before you put the potatoes on to parboil). Set a timer on the beef, as we’ll use that for reference from now on.

Whilst the potatoes are boiling is a good time to peel the parsnip. After 10 minutes, take the potatoes off, and drain them, and then with 45 minutes to go on the meat (which if you’re doing a 450g bit of beef, should almost be straight away), put the potatoes around the meat in the baking tray, and then drizzle some olive oil on them.

Once the potatoes are in, there’s a few jobs you need to do: peel the vegetables and then prepare the Yorkshire Pudding mix. Peeling the vegetables (and chopping them us as you desire) is pretty self-explanatory, so go ahead and get that out of the way first. I also like to clear up as I go along, so give the pan that had the potatoes in a quick wash (it shouldn’t be too mucky…) and you can re-use that for the veg (but don’t add any water yet – it’ll go soggy)

Don’t forget the parsnip – with about 30 minutes to go, chuck that in the roasting tin with the potatoes and meat.

Now we’ve got the veg ready to go, and everything else is in the oven, we can prepare the Yorkshire pudding mix. Grab your jug, whisk, sieve, egg, flour and milk. Ideally you should have an equal amount of egg and plain flour (about 80 grams) which’ll make 4 puds – 2 each. Sieve the flour into your jug (get lots of air in it) and then add the egg. Then you’ll need to add the milk – I normally keep adding until it gets to the right consistency, but add small amounts at first and if it’s too thick you’ll know when trying to mix it. Whisk it all together, keeping adding milk until you get it just runny enough (this will take practice and getting to know it I’m afraid). Whisk it until there are lots of bubbles in it – air is the key to making them rise.

And now we should have about 15 minutes to go. Grab your Yorkshire pudding tin and put oil in each bit (enough to coat the bottom, unless you want them to stick to the pan!) and whack it in the oven to get the oil hot – I’d also turn the heat back up to 220ºC at this point. Also, boil the kettle to get it ready for the veg.  Once the kettle’s boiled, pour it over the veg and turn the hob on, then get the pre-heated Yorkshire pudding tin out of the oven and pour the mix out of the jug equally between the 4 dents. Get it back in the oven with 10 minutes left on the beef and then wash out that jug because we can re-use it for the gravy.

Ding ding! Your timer should now be going off and the beef’s time is up, so get it out of the oven. It should be ready to go and so should the potatoes too. I normally cut into it at this point to check it’s done, but lots of advice on the Internet says to leave it to rest, so it’s up to you and how much you trust your timings. If there’s two of you making this meal, this is when a second set of hands really comes in handy. You need to carve the meat into thin slices and also make the gravy from the veg water (which should be done around now). Using the veg water for the gravy means any vitamins that’ve leaked into the water (which is apparently a lot of them) are retained to help your 5-a-day goodness. So put some gravy granules into your jug and add that veg water – make to your preferred consistency (I like my gravy quite thick). Use a slotted spoon to stop any veg escaping into the gravy, and then serve it out onto your plates. Hopefully the other person’s chopped up the beef as desired, so this is time to get everything onto the plates…

Your Yorkshire puddings should be now all done and risen, so get them out, put 2 on each plate and then get the gravy on. And then get eating (with a glass of wine/beer/cola as desired).

For dessert, we normally have a cheesecake from the supermarket, and then we’re so full we just fall asleep watching TV. Perfect Sunday.