What Beef to Get for Roast Uk
You can learn a lot from a pig's thigh. Just ask Mark White, AKA "Marky Market", who works as a kind of personal shopper at Smithfield, London's giant meat market. Plonk a leg of pork in front of him, and while he won't be able to tell you the animal's age or star sign, he will at least be able to state its sex.
If there's a reddish patch high on the inner thigh, it was a male. "That's where there were a lot of blood vessels near its testicles," White explains, although "testicles" isn't quite the word he uses.
Why does this matter? Because when you're buying pork, you ideally want it to come from a female pig. With males, there's always the possibility – a tiny one, to be fair – that the meat has been tainted by testosterone during the slaughter process. Now you've learned this fascinating fact, don't feel guilty if you forget it. There are more important considerations when planning your perfect roast …
Beef
First of all, you'll need to decide what cut you want. "You can roast so many bits of a cow," notes Richard Turner, executive chef at the Hawksmoor steak restaurants. Classic cuts, however, include silverside (no 1 in the illustration below), topside (2), rump (3), sirloin (4), fillet (5) and fore rib (6). All but the last are usually sold boneless. If you're nervous about carving meat, this may be tempting, but is it best for flavour? "Personally, I roast on the bone," says Turner, who loves a rib roast with plenty of fat. "You end up with a more succulent piece of meat." If you must go boneless, he says, "My favourite cut is rump, although it's not often sold as a roasting joint." For a smaller joint, you could do a lot worse than rolled ribeye (7), cut from the centre (or "eye") of the ribs.
Any buying tips? "I wouldn't buy meat from a supermarket," Turner says. "I'd always go to a proper butcher or a market. And don't buy meat that's vacuum-packed or clingfilmed. Meat sweats. It needs air to stay in prime condition, and to age properly." Beef should hang at a low temperature for at least 14 days – dehydration concentrates the flavour and enzymes tenderise the meat.
What does a good piece of beef look like? "It should be dry to the touch and smell slightly sweet," Turner says. "Unless it has just been cut that second, it should not be bright red. Bright red indicates it's been kept in an oxygen-free environment." There should be fat, he says, but don't get hung up on visible marbling – often the fat that adds most flavour is hidden in the fibres of the meat, barely discernible.
Ask your butcher questions, Turner adds. Such as? "What breed it is. I wouldn't buy crossbreeds myself, because they grow too quickly, and flavour takes time. The words to look out for are 'pure breeds' or 'native breeds'. My favourites are Longhorn, Galloway, Dexter and Angus."
Lamb
Shoulder (1) is a good choice for lamb too, alongside rack (2) (a row of unseparated chops, basically), chump (3) and, of course, leg (4). "If you want to do a slow cook – something that you can leave in the oven and not worry about too much, I'd always go for lamb shoulder," says Marky Market. "It's a very forgiving joint. It's hard-working muscle, so it needs a slow cook to break down the fibre and sinews, but the fat in there bastes them. It's so easy and there's no precise timing like there is with a rack of lamb, where it has to be all nice and pink."
What should you look out for at the butchers? "Traditionally matured lamb should have a slightly darker colour than un-matured lamb," is the advice from online butchers Donald Russell. "It also has good marbling with small creamy-white flecks of fat throughout the muscle. This is critical to the flavour of the meat, as the fat melts during cooking to make the meat juicy and tasty."
Pork
Again the advice is to avoid supermarkets, where almost all pork comes from bland-tasting hybrids known simply as "commercial pigs". So what should you buy for the best flavour? Rare breed, says Jasper Aykroyd, the chef-turned-curing-expert known as the Bacon Wizard. "It's not only the flavour – it will roast better. Two of the more common breeds are Gloucestershire Old Spot and Duroc, and – if you can get hold of them – Berkshire pigs are incredible for roasting. And there's a new kid on the block called Mangalitsa. They're the furry pigs that look like pig-shaped sheep."
It helps that rare breed pigs are typically raised in good conditions. Chefs and butchers all agree that happy, healthy pigs make for tastier meat. This is particular true of the hours and minutes just before slaughter, where stress can spoil the flavour and texture of the meat."Old breeds and higher welfare standards tend to go hand in hand," says Aykroyd. "There's just no point having a rare breed and putting it in indoor intensive farming. The best stuff you can get has been roaming around in woodland. Pigs love to grub around, and if they're getting lots of tannin-rich tree bark, oak roots and things like that, you will find that the fat is a lot better quality."
Fat is essential to a good pork roast, he adds, basting the meat as it cooks and improving the flavour. If you're worried about fat in general, he says: "Unlike any other common domestic animal, pork fat is more than 50% monounsaturated – the type you find in olive oil. And it's quite high in things like oleic acid and omega-3s and 6s."
Which cuts are best for roasting? Rib's (1) good, and loin (2), and even the relatively small jowls or cheeks (3) if you can get them when they're really fresh. But, he says: "Shoulder (4) is the really good one. It has both kinds of fat – the solid one on the top, which produces lovely crackling, and the marbling within the muscle. And there's connective tissue. Normally this would be very tough, but if it's roasted nicely it breaks down and becomes lovely and gelatinous. I also love pork belly. It's very fatty, but you can press it after cooking to remove some of that."
"I would always buy British pork," Aykroyd adds, "rather than, say, Dutch or Danish. For a start, our welfare standards are ahead of the curve as far as Europe is concerned."
Chicken
Where should you get your chicken? "A farm shop is almost always the best place," says Mark Diacono, author of River Cottage's Chicken & Eggs handbook. "Even if the chicken isn't from their farm itself, they're likely to have a close relationship with their supplier. The more the seller can tell you about the bird and where it comes from, the happier you should be to buy from them."
"A bird that's lived a free-ranging life will always taste better," he adds. "Being cooped up with little access to natural light, air and with no freedom to exhibit all of the behaviours that make a chicken a chicken makes for a terrible life and a bland-tasting bird. Slow-growing, happy free-range chickens simply taste better. Organic, meanwhile, ensures all the benefits of a free-range system with the added reassurance of knowing there are no unnecessary medical interventions and no GM feed. The bird should be labelled as free-range, organic or RSPCA Freedom Food, ignore bucolic-sounding phrases such as 'farm fresh' as they mean nothing. Even the Red Tractor logo is no guarantee of high welfare."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/21/beef-pork-lamb-cuts-guide-butchers
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