Roasts

Spice Rubbed Roasted Pork Loin With Grapes and Port Wine Sauce
KitchenCue - Vol 3 - Roasting DVD
1 - 1 1/2 lb. boneless pork loin
1 t. whole allspice berries
1 t. whole juniper berries
2 cloves
1 t. whole coriander seeds
1/8 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. paprika
2 t. finely chopped thyme
3 T. brown sugar
2 T. olive oil
Approx. 2 t. pomegranate molasses or water
Salt - freshly ground pepper
8 fingerling or other small potatoes, halved lengthwise
4 shallots - peeled and halved through the root
1/2 lb. red seedless grapes - snipped into 4 bunches
Approx. 1/2 c. Port wine
2 t. red wine vinegar
1 1/2 c. chicken broth
* Omit salting if pork loin has been brined
Trim any silver skin from the loin and lightly score the fat cap at 1” angular cuts. Tie the pork loin with kitchen twine at 1-inch intervals.
Place a small, dry saute pan over medium heat. Add the allspice, juniper, clove and coriander. Toast, just until just fragrant, approximately 30 seconds and remove to a plate to cool. Add cinnamon and paprika to the same pan and heat until fragrant. Pour into a small bowl. Grind whole spices in a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle. Add to the cinnamon and paprika. Stir in thyme and brown sugar. Add olive oil and enough pomegranate molasses or water to make a slurry. Season pork loin with prepared rub, cover and refrigerate up to 12 hours.
Bring pork to uniform room temperature. Prepare the accompaniments by placing potatoes, shallots and grapes in a large bowl. Season with olive oil, salt and pepper and toss gently.
Position oven rack so roasting pan will sit in the center of oven.
Preheat oven to 425º. Prepare rack in roasting pan.
Season pork with salt* and set fat side up, on roasting rack. Place in oven and roast for approximately 10 minutes to initiate browning. Reduce temperature to 325º, place the potatoes and shallots around the pork and lay the grapes over the top of them. Continue roasting pork until the internal temperature reaches 135º, approximately 30-40 minutes.
Transfer pork loin and accompaniments to a plate and tent with foil to rest, 10-20 minutes before slicing. Remove rack and drain any excess fat from the roasting pan. Place pan over medium high heat and when hot, add Port and vinegar to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom to remove all of the caramelized bits. Reduce wine by half, add broth and bring to a simmer.
Simmer 3-5 minutes to meld flavors, season with salt and freshly ground pepper and remove from heat. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a small pot and cover to keep warm. Skim off any fat that floats to the top.
Remove string from around pork loin. Slice and serve with roasted grapes, potatoes, shallots and sauce. Yield: 4 servings

Roast Beef
Source: Simply Recipes.com
3 to 3 1/2 lbs    Boneless Rump Roast - (pick a end
    -cut with a lot of fat marbling)
    Olive oil
8    slivers of garlic
    Salt and pepper
You will need a meat thermometer
For the gravy:
    Red wine, water - and or beef stock
corn starch
1 Start with the roast at room temperature (remove from refrigerator 1 hour before cooking - keep it wrapped). Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2 With a sharp knife make 8 small incisions around the roast. Place a sliver of garlic into each incision. Take a tablespoon or so of olive oil and spread all around the roast. Sprinkle around the roast with salt and pepper. Place the roast directly on an oven rack, fatty side up, with a drip pan on a rack beneath the roasting rack. This arrangement creates convection in the oven so that you do not need to turn the roast. The roast is placed fat side up so that as the fat melts it will bathe the entire roast in its juices.
3 Brown the roast at 375°F for half an hour. Lower the heat to 225°F. The roast should take somewhere from 2 to 3 hours additionally to cook. When the roast just starts to drip its juices and it is brown on the outside, check the temperature with a meat thermometer. Pull the roast from the oven when the inside temperature of the roast is 135° to 140°F. Let the roast rest for at least 15 minutes, tented in aluminum foil to keep warm, before carving to serve Serves 4-6.
To make the gravy:
Remove the dripping pan from the oven and place on the stove top at medium heat. Note that if you are pulling the roast out early, for rare or a medium rare level of doneness, you may not have a lot of drippings. Hopefully you will have some. If not, you may want to leave the roast in a little longer at even lower heat, 175°F, to ease some more drippings out of it. Add some water, red wine, or beef stock to the drippings to deglaze (loosen the drippings from the pan). Dissolve a tablespoon of cornstarch in a little water and add to the drip pan. Stir quickly while the gravy thickens to avoid lumping. You can add a little butter if there is not a lot of fat in the drippings. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mom adds some fresh thyme too if she has some.

Prime Rib
Source: Simply Recipes
    One standing rib roast, 3 to 7 ribs (estimate
    -serving 2 people per rib), bones cut away from
    -the roast and tied back to the roast with kitchen
    -string (ask your butcher to prepare the roast
    -this way)
1 (1 oz.) pkg.    Au Jus Mix - (don’t add water)
Prime rib refers to the king of beef cuts, the standing rib roast, “standing” because to cook it, you simply position the roast on its rib bones in the roasting pan, no need for a rack. Estimate 2 people served for every rib. Note that just because you are ordering a “prime” rib, it doesn’t mean that you are getting USDA Prime. Most “prime ribs” we get from market are actually USDA Choice quality.[1] If you want USDA Prime prime rib, which has more fat marbling throughout the meat, and which can easily cost 50% more per pound, you will likely need to special order it from your butcher.
1 Remove roast from the refrigerator, loosely wrapped, 3 hours before cooking. Roasts should always be brought close to room temperature first, before they go in the oven.
Cookbooks often call for the excess fat to be removed. By “excess” fat they mean any fat more than an inch thick. The fat is what provides the flavor and what you are paying for with prime rib, so you want to leave it on. Your butcher should have removed any excess fat.
If your butcher hasn’t already done so, cut the bones away from the roast and tie them back on to the roast with kitchen string. This will make it much easier to carve the roast, while still allowing you to stand the roast on the rib bones while cooking.
2 Preheat your oven to 500°F, or the highest it will go (our oven only goes up to 450°F). Generously rub Au Jus powder over the roast.
3 Insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the roast, making sure it doesn’t touch a bone. (Some meat thermometers require that you poke a hole first with a skewer, and then insert the thermometer.) Place the roast, fat side up, rib side down in a roasting pan in the oven.
4 After 15 minutes on 500°F, reduce the heat to 325°F. To figure out the total cooking time, allow about 13-15 minutes per pound for rare and 15-17 minutes per pound for medium rare. The actual cooking time will depend on the shape of the roast and your particular oven. A flatter roast will cook more quickly than a thicker one. So make sure to use a meat thermometer. This is not a roast to “wing it”. Error on the rare side.
Roast in oven until thermometer registers 120°F for rare or 130°F for medium.
Check the temperature of the roast using a meat thermometer a half hour before you expect the roast to be done. For example, with a 10 pound roast, you would expect 2 1/2 hours of total cooking time (15 minutes at 500° and 2 1/4 hours at 325°). In this case, check after 2 hours of total cooking time, or 1 hour 45 minutes after you lowered the oven temp to 325°.
Once the roast has reached the desired internal temperature, remove it from oven and let rest 20 minutes, covered with aluminum foil, before carving. The roast will continue to cook while it is resting.
5 With a knife or scissors, cut the strings which attach the meat to the bones. Remove the bones (save for making stock for soup. Then, using a sharp carving knife, slice meat across the grain for serving, making the slices about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Print this post