in

Love ItLove It

The Simple Secret to Cooking a Juicy Roast

Many people love roast beef, pork, venison, elk, or what have you, but find that the meat ends up dry, even when it is flavorful. It isn’t just bad luck. There is a major secret and several minor ones that usually leads to a juicy roast.

Selecting the roast

The first step is to select a roast that has marbling, but not much gristle. Marbling is small amounts of fat throughout the meat. If it doesn’t contain the marbling, the roast is likely to be tough and will be apt to dry out during baking.

Moistening and tenderizing

It can be helpful to let the roast marinate overnight, especially in an acid-based marinade. By ‘acid-based marinade’, we are talking about one that contains vinegar or citrus juice.

This helps because the acid loosens the meat and begins to break down the fat. While this primarily makes the roast tenderer, it allows the marbling to sort of melt during cooking, leaving the roast moist and flavorful when it is done.

Adding water and covering

If you simply plop the roast in a roasting pan, slip it in the oven, and bake it, you are inviting it to turn out dry. As it heats up, the juices in the roast evaporate.

Instead, add a cup or so of water and cover the baking pan. This helps to retain the moisture and it virtually steam-cooks the meat. This also usually leaves enough fluid in the pan when the roast is done to make gravy, simply by heating the drippings and stirring in some flour.

The pot should be checked periodically to maintain the water level.

Start at room temperature

As contrary as it might seem, if you put a roast that is cold or partly frozen into the oven, it will tend to dry out rapidly. The roast should always be at room temperature before it is baked. This also helps control the cooking of the roast so it cooks evenly.

Sear the meat

Regardless of how well done you prefer the roast to be, start out by putting it in a hot oven; about 500 F. Cooking it at this temperature for 10-20 minutes sears the outside of the meat, sealing in the juices and flavor.

The oven can then be turned down to 275 F and the roast can be baked 20 minutes per pound, for a medium-rare roast, or longer if you prefer it to be more well-done.

Wait on it

The number one cause of a dry roast is that as soon as it is done, too often people remove it from the oven and immediately cut and serve it. This is a big no-no. Let the roast sit for 10-20 minutes before cutting it up.

If you cut it before then, a surprising amount of moisture is lost through steam, leaving the meat dry. If none of the other tips are used, try this one for a moist roast.

Though I was a professional cook for some time, I learned how to cook a moist and tender roast from my mother, who learned from her mother. To the day she died, I don’t recall a single instance of one of her roasts turning out dry, regardless of the cut of roast or kind of meat. That is saying a lot because when I was growing up, we had venison or elk roast frequently.

You now know her secrets, especially her most important one. I’m sure that she would have loved knowing that someone might be helped by this knowledge.

Report

What do you think?

Written by Rex Trulove

21 Comments

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply