Roasting

Roasting uses indirect, diffused heat (as in an oven), and is suitable for slower cooking of meat in a larger, whole piece.

During roasting, meats and vegetables are frequently basted on the surface with butter, lard, or oil to reduce the loss of moisture by evaporation.

Roasting originally meant cooking meat or a bird on or in front of a fire, as with a grill or spit.

To roast meat, racks with skewers, or, if accessible, complicated gear arrangements, would be utilized to turn the piece(s).

In the past, this method was often associated with the upper class and special occasions, rather than customary mealtimes, because it required freshly killed meat and close attention during cooking.

It was easy to ruin the meat's taste with a smoky fire or negligence to rotate it at regular intervals.

Thus, elite families, who were able to afford quality meat, appointed this task to servants or invested in technology like automatic turning devices.

In general, it works best for cooking whole chickens, turkey, and leaner cuts of lamb, pork, and beef.

Although there is a growing fashion in some restaurants to serve "rose pork", temperature monitoring of the center of the roast is the only sure way to avoid foodborne disease.

[citation needed] Some vegetables, such as brussels sprouts, potatoes, carrots, eggplants/aubergines, zucchini/courgette, pumpkin, turnips, rutabagas/swedes, parsnips, cauliflower, asparagus, squash, peppers, yam and plantain lend themselves to roasting as well.

[citation needed] In the United States and Britain, a mix of vegetables and meat roasted together in the same pan are known as a traybake.

[10] Roast meats have typically been high-status foods, due in part to the expense and scarcity of meat and in part to the expense of the extra fuel needed for roasting, compared to the fuel used for boiling foods in a pot.

[20] The arrangement of dishes in the Livre fort excellent is very similar to that of the menus in the Ménagier de Paris, written 150 years before the Petit traicté.

By the early 18th century, though, certain ingredients and cooking methods were increasingly confined to the roast stage of the meal.

[25] Roasted fowl and small game in Classical Service were spit-roasted and nicely browned, served "dry" and not in a sauce or ragoût.

The fish were substitutions or counterparts to the roasts served on meat days, corresponding to their position in the meal but not their cooking method.