Once the meat had cured this time around it kind of fell apart into four large pieces, which I left whole and bunged in with plenty of onions, carrots, swede, potato and beef stock, plus bay leaf & thyme. It then went on our new wood burning stove - we've been experimenting with cooking on it, but it's early days!
The picture shows it with the basil dumplings added. I wouldn't use basil normally, but we had some left that needed finishing up (well, it probably needed throwing away really, but I hate doing that) so in it went. I should add that the Le Creuset pot that the pot roast is in (OK, well perhaps 'stew' might be more accurate!) I found at the local dump for £1. Weird how great stuff like that is thrown out sometimes, but good for those of us who don't mind reusing what others don't want ...
The stove did a great job in the end of cooking it through, and I think will be a fab addition to the house - and that's apart from being a brilliant way of heating the house without relying on fossil fuel. The cat certainly likes it at any rate.
All in all a great meal for very little cost, and perfect for this time of year, although you might want to go easy on the dumplings!
4 comments:
I came over from The Cottage Smallholder and am so pleased I did. I'm a Sunday Roaster too. What you say about the leftovers (previous posts) is absolutely true - the larger the joint the better it is and the more economical it becomes, and nothing better whatsoever than making your own stock from the bones when all the meat is spent. (You're going to fall in love with that wood burning stove.)
Great title - great site.
Thanks for that. I feel a bit of a minnow compared to sites like The Cottage Smallholder, but always nice to be appreciated!
I'll be very interested to read about your cooking on the woodburner, as I'm travelling down that road too - so far, I've found that a really good way to slow cooking down to a simmer is to use a slate tile between the burner and the pan (we had some left over after installing the base)
Joanna
Interesting idea - we've got the cast iron disc on top at the moment which was part of the stove until it was cut out in order to make the hole for the top outlet (which we don't use). You can just about see it in the picture. I was very keen to be able to cook on the thing, so made sure we could get the flue out the back. As it happened when we put this one in we discovered the original hole in the living room was much bigger, with an arch about 1.5m up the wall. We reckon there used ot be an old range in the room for heating and cooking.
I've been experimenting with different materials, i.e. cast iron versus thinner steel and aluminium. Was thinking of trying to find an old trivet at the recycling center, as I reckon that will be just right for a really low cook. Today though I think it'll just be warming the plates :-)
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