Sunday Dinner with ease
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- Posted date:
- 17-10-2018
Cooking An AGA Sunday Dinner
The AGA truly comes into its own when you are preparing large meals such as a traditional Sunday Dinner; you can cook multiple items on both plates and its multitude of ovens. If you haven't yet mastered the schedule, the gentle warming oven will ensure that everything is piping hot until it's ready to serve. It is a perfect cooker to prepare your delicacies if you are expecting some guest for an AGA Sunday dinner since it does not require you to keep on monitoring it. We can say this cooker "looks after itself."
~3 hours
Serves 6
Ingredients
Beef
2kg joint of topside beef (or a cut of your choice)
½ tsp olive oil
Sea salt & Black pepper to season
Mixed herbs such as rosemary and thyme
3 onions, peeled and each sliced into four circles
Seasonal Vegetables of choice
Roast Potatoes
1.5kg roasting potatoes, such as Maris Piper
Oil, goose fat or beef dripping
Yorkshire Puddings
115g (4 oz) strong plain flour, sieved
2 free range eggs, beaten
300ml (½ pint) milk
Pinch of salt
Black pepper
Oil or beef dripping
Traditional Roast Beef Dinner
Roast Beef: Let the beef rest in room temperature for an hour before cooking. Gently rub the olive oil onto the surface of the meat to help retain the seasoning and crisp the crust of the joint. Dress the joint with a sprinkling of sea salt and ground black pepper and the herbs of your choice. Place the joist on a bed of cut onions and slide into the roasting oven for 30 minutes + 15minutes/500g. A 2kg joint should take roughly 2 hours.
To check the rarity of the meat, use a meat thermometer. A rare joint should be 40C in the centre, medium around 55C and well-done joints should be at least 60C. If you don't have a meat thermometer to hand, check the colour of the juice which runs from the meat; the darker the juice the rarer the meat.
After the meat has finished cooking, remove from the oven, cover with foil and move to the warming plate to rest for at least 30 minutes. This will allow the meat to re-absorb the juices and prevent it from being too dry to taste. In the meanwhile, you can cook all the trimmings with the roasting oven and make the gravy. Simply add two tablespoons of flour to the fat and onions in the roasting tin, add 600ml of stock (or red wine and stock) after stirring. Pour the contents in a saucepan and whisk constantly whilst bringing to a boil. Strain through a sieve before serving.
Roast Potatoes: Peel the potatoes and cut into even sized pieces. Use the boiling plate to parboil in salted water before slightly fluffing by shaking them in the saucepan with the lid on. Heat the fat (oil, goose/duck fat) in a roasting tin and add the potatoes when the fat is sizzling. Turn occasionally for evenly golden and crispy potatoes. Depending on their size, they should take roughly 60-75 minutes.
Yorkshire Pudding: Sift flour into a large mixing bowl; make a well in the centre to add the eggs and half of the milk. Whisk into a smooth batter before adding the rest of the milk. The finished mixture should have the consistency of single cream. Heat a little fat in a 12-hole muffin tin in the roasting oven. Pour the batter into the hot fat when it's sizzling. Be careful not to fill it too much as they will rise out of the holes. Return the tin to the roasting oven for about 20 minutes (or until risen and golden).
You can make the batter in advance and leave to stand in a jug until you are ready to use it; don't forget to whisk again into an even batter before using. Alternatively, you can make the Yorkshire puddings in the morning and simply reheat in the roasting oven for a couple of minutes before serving.