Matured Tastebuds
When I was littlewe had Koolaid every night for dinner. My siblings and I fought over the honor of choosing the flavor packed and mixing it up. Red was my favorite. It was as much a part of getting ready for dinner as the plates and silverware. That pitcher just had to be on the table.
And there were many Sunday mornings that before we left the house for church, Mom would throw a roast in the oven for later that day…like 4 or 5 hours later. I remember those roasts. Well done (VERY well done), with roasted potatoes and carrots, all covered in gravy. The roast was terribly dry, but that’s what roasts are like…right? That’s what gravy is for, after all!
I left home with the idea burned in my brain that meat…all meat…was to be cooked until there was nothing left to cook. This included roasts, steaks, hamburgers, pork loin, everything! When Paul and I got married, if we ever went out for a “fancy meal” all steaks were ordered well done. And we would have sent it back if it came any other way.
Somewhere, somehow our tastes started to change. I stopped thinking that KoolAid was a great additions to meals, and I realized that with the sole exception of pot roasts, beef is best somewhere between barely and really pink, depending on its application. And along with the pink comes juiciness, tenderness and flavor!
I also realized this last week that a roast can be part of a weeknight dinner, even if its not cooked in the crockpot. Somehow, even though I discovered that roasts should not be cooked through and through, I never made the leap to the one hour of cooking can be done after work.
But this week, the stars were aligned. When I asked Paul to pull a roast out of the freezer, in my mind I was thinking a chuck roast to go in the crockpot, but instead he grabbed a sirloin tip roast and I knew that if I crockpotted that thing, it would turn into a lump of petrified wood. So, resigning myself to a late dinner, I came home from work, looked the cooking time up online and was thrilled to see a one-hour cook time. By 7:15, we were sitting down to a juicy, delicious roast. A little later than normal, but not too much. And man…was it worth it!
Try it yourself and see. But may I suggest pairing it with a nice red wine rather than KoolAid.
Recipes | greengrassliving | 
December 15, 2008 11:21 am
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