{"id":1149,"date":"2018-08-16T15:04:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T22:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2018-08-16T15:04:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T22:04:53","slug":"beef-roasted-stewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/?p=1149","title":{"rendered":"Beef: Roasted & Stewed"},"content":{"rendered":"

We really wanted to demo a large cut of meat roasted on a spit, and beef had to be our choice.\u00a0\u00a0Beef was a rather expensive meat choice in much of England, and possibly in the Lowlands of Scotland, as well, as raising cattle required a great land investment.\u00a0 But, archaeological evidence suggests that beef was the most commonly eaten meat in the Scottish Highlands during the Middle Ages.\u00a0 Sheep were grown almost everywhere for wool, and mutton was the second most popular source of meat, followed by pig, goat, horse and deer.\u00a0 Fresh meat could be cured with dry salt, pickled, or smoked to preserve.\u00a0 Chickens and geese were also kept for food, and people who lived near rivers or the sea ate fish and other seafood.<\/p>\n

The main reason we wanted to demo spit-cooking was that we wanted to show this common method of preparing large amounts of meat (which were often rather tough cuts, due to either the location they were found on the animal, or due to them being from an older animal).\u00a0 Tough cuts of meat were usually boiled, or stewed, a favorable method that also produced a tasty broth that could be saved and utilized later for, say, a pottage or a sauce.<\/p>\n

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I’m going to have to update this post, later, with better pictures.\u00a0 But, this photo shows the spit setup we used, with a pan located directly under where the meat would be, to catch the drippings as the meat was cooking and basted.\u00a0 The actual fire area would be located beside the meat, not under it (dripping fat into a fire is a big safety no-no).\u00a0 The drippings would be saved and, after the meat was cooked and removed from the fire and allowed to rest (to keep the juices from running out and leaving the meat dry), the meat would be sliced and returned to a sauce made from the drippings.<\/p>\n

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For our recipe, we looked to the earliest recipes we could find for seasoning beef in Scotland.\u00a0 We seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, allspice, nutmeg, clove, mace, thyme and savory.\u00a0 As it cooked, we basted it with a combination of beef stock & ale, which we later used to make a sauce with the drippings, more stock & ale, additional vinegar and some more of the same spices.<\/p>\n

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We really wanted to demo a large cut of meat roasted on a spit, and beef had to be our choice.\u00a0\u00a0Beef was a rather expensive meat choice in much of England, and possibly in the Lowlands of Scotland, as well, as raising cattle required a great land investment.\u00a0 But, archaeological evidence suggests that beef was … Continue reading “Beef: Roasted & Stewed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomingbeathog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}