Classic Sunday Roast

A competition run by Sodexo revealed the nation’s favourite British dish is none other than the classic Sunday Roast. We may not have needed a competition where people vote to find that information out howver, as it’s a well known fact us Brits love a good roast, whether it’s chicken, beef, lamb or pork we’re going to love it. We love eating it and we love making it for our friends and family. It’s a meal that brings everyone together and is often associated with happy memories such as Christmas Day.

However, in this particular competition approximately 2,500 people voted and it was open to Sodexo customers in schools, universities, hospitals, offices and military facilities across the UK.

Fish and Chips - Another British Favourite

Some reasons why the Sunday roast was chosen as the nation’s favourite included the association with childhood memories of sitting round the family dining table as dad carved up the roast and a sense of togetherness. We think it might have something to do with the fact that a roast just tastes so good! There’s also the delicious garnishes and side dishes as well such as baby roast potatoes, the gravy and of course if you have roast pork, there’s the crackling to get excited about as well!  I think we all agree the classic Sunday roast is best as a lamb roast though!

Other British foods that rated highly included ‘comfort foods’ namely fish and chips, toad in the hole, shepherd’s pie and chicken curry ranking highly amongst the Brits.

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450.

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A homecooked Sunday Roast

Here at BigRoast.com we like to share our knowledge on roasts. We may be the leading professionals in hog and spit roasts, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love to cook delicious and relaxed roasts at home on a Sunday for our families and we know you do too so here are a few tips to get your Sunday roasts in tip top shape.

You can have a variety of roasts, there’s the ever popular lamb roast, but there’s also beef, chicken and pork, all of which can be just as mouth watering as the lamb roast.

If you go with the chicken roast, it’s a great choice as if you have any leftovers you can use them in risottos or make a chicken salad. A tip for chicken roasts is to  push a flavoured herb or spice butter under the skin of the chicken before cooking  as this helps the flavours to penetrate the meat and keeps the breast moist during cooking.

Pork roasts provide the yummy crackling and or a more unusual flavour combination, try rubbing the skin with freshly grated ginger.

Roast beef is one of the more simple dishes and for it to taste its best, it’s usually a good idea to keep the roast simple and use lots of gravy and roast vegetables. If you want to add some extra flavour to the gravy add pieces of onion or shallot to the roasting tin.

A tip for all roasts is to leave them to rest for a while before carving. As the meat relaxes, the juices pull back into the meat making it easier to carve and more tender and moist. Most joints need between 15-20 minutes resting time – leave in a warm place so it doesn’t go cold, but avoid covering if possible, especially poultry, as the steam that forms inside the foil will turn crisp skin soggy.

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450

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In this day and age it’s all too easy to get swept up in the processed, pre-packaged, microvavable meals and food as they are so accessible and cheap. They suit our busy lifestyles and are the easiest thing to cook, after all you simply throw it in the microvave. Enduring the commute home from work each day in horrific London traffic is bad enough, by the time we get home, the last thing we want to do is cook.

Enter Marks & Spencer pre-cooked ready meals, they are a god send! Pick a few of those up and you’re right for the week. The only thing is, how healthy are they really? Are you really doing the right thing by your body by purchasing these meals instead of making your own? We’re not talking about making an elaborate lamb roast every night, but you should start to think about the nutrion your body needs and whether or not the microvave meals are making the cut.

Having a small peice of meat (lamb, beef, chicken, fish) along with steamed vegetables will provide you with a very healthy and nutritious mean, as long as you don’t coat the meat in crumbs or batter or pour melted butter all over the veggies.

It’s a high protein, low fat meal you know is going to do your body the world of good. Red meat can build and maintain muscle, help you gain strength and vitality and will power you through a busy day as it contains iron, calcium, enzymes, Vitamin B12 and amino acids. So do the right thing by your body and eat more meat!

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450

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Everyone loves a classic lamb roast recipe, but these days people chop and change the classic recipes around to make them all snazzy and end up losing the traditional taste that we all know and love in the process. So here at BigRoast.com we’ve decided to share a recipe that we think produces one of best roast lambs you’ll ever taste! This recipe serves four.

Roast Lamb is the perfect Christmas dinner dish

What you need:
1.6kg leg of lamb
3 garlic cloves, halved
2 tbs fresh rosemary leaves
60ml olive oil
1kg chat potatoes, halved
300g  frozen baby peas
20g butter
2 tbs shredded fresh mint

Wine gravy
2 tbs plain flour
375ml chicken stock
125ml dry white wine

What you do:
1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Cut six slits, 2cm deep and 2cm long, into the lamb. Press one piece of garlic into each slit. Place the lamb in a large roasting pan. Sprinkle evenly with rosemary and drizzle over one tablespoon of oil. Season with salt and pepper and roast in oven for 15 minutes.
2. Remove from oven and place the potato, in a single layer, around the lamb. Drizzle the remaining oil over the potato. Season with salt and pepper. Roast in oven for a further 1 hour for medium or until cooked to your liking.
3. Cook peas in a saucepan of boiling water for 3-4 minutes or until just tender. Drain and return to pan then add the butter and mint and toss to combine.
4. Transfer the lamb to a plate and cover with foil. Set aside for 10 minutes to rest. Turn potato and roast in oven for a further 10 minutes or until crisp. Transfer to a bowl and cover with foil to keep warm.
5. For the gravy, place the roasting pan over high heat. Add the flour and cook stirring for one minute or until the mixture bubbles. Gradually add the stock and wine, and cook, scraping the pan to dislodge any bits that have cooked onto the base, for 5-8 minutes or until the gravy thickens.
6. Thickly slice the lamb across the grain and serve with potato, peas and gravy.

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450.

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With Christmas just around the corner there’s never been a better time to start thinking about the big Christmas dinner. Are you going to have a traditional lamb roast london style? With succulent moist roast lamb, mint sauces, peas, potato and gravy? Or perhaps you will opt for a more modern style of Christmas dinner with fresh salads and seafood? In any case, there’s no right or wrong choice when it comes to the Christmas Dinner, your friends and family will just be overjoyed you’ve cooked something which means they won’t have to so everyone’s a winner!

It’s always a disaster when Aunty Betty wants to make the deserts and the starters especially when Uncle Bob thinks he’s making the deserts instead of the main course so on the day there’s no main course but a thousand deserts and everyone ends up eating apple pie and custard all day. This year why not tell everyone that you will run the show in terms of food and surprise everyone with a traditional lamb roast.

You can make it yourself and spend hours slaving away over the stove to show off your excellent cooking abilities or you can cheat and have London’s premier hog and lamb roast company, Big Roast, take care of it for you. There is often a lot of meat left over from a lamb roast so a great idea is to have the Big Roast team come out and cook the roast for you, then you can use the left over meat for a Boxing Day party as well and kill two birds with one stone so to speak!

The team can come out and cook the roast for you on Christmas Eve  and you can reheat it the next day for everyone. They will all be so surprised with the feast you present!

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450.

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Remember the series of advertisements for lamb that used to be on in the early nineties where people would be given an amazing opportunity that they always turned down because their mother was cooking a lamb roast for dinner? Probably the most famous one was when a girl won a dinner with Tom Cruise which she turned down to go have her mother’s roast.

The advertisements were trying to get the public to start eating more meat again, in particular lamb. They worked a treat, with people’s memories of their mum’s home cooking coming back to life, more people than ever were back at the butchers ordering more meat.

The nutrional value of lamb is often overlooked and with the recent move to vegetarianism, it’s no doubt the butchers and farmers were encouraging people to get back on the meat wagon. Lamb is full of zinc which is essential for growth, tissue repair, and a healthy immune system, and iron which is needed for the formation of red blood cells. It is also rich in B vitamins, especially B12. So get back to basics and have a lamb roast london style tonight! Or better yet, have a lamb roast cooked for you by the Big Roast company. If you have a special event or party coming up, Big Roast can cater to your every need. Feel free to contact them on the number below.

Big Roast is London’s leading hog roast and lamb roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450.

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Lamb Roasts are becoming increasingly popular with people wanting the hog roast experience without inviting 100 guests to a party.

Big Roast is London’s original lamb roast specialist and is available to provide a roast of any size. If you would like to find out more about Big Roast’s lamb roast you can call our enthusiastic staff on 0845 500 5450 or contact us using our online form.

Big Roast recently posted a list of frequently asked questions on hog roasts and so in the interest in impartiality (we don’t want the lamb roasters to feel we favour the pigs) we are posting the answers to recent lamb roast questions.

How many people can a lamb roast feed?

A whole lamb can feed up to 45 people. A lamb roast is perfect for smaller events, with the recommended minimum number for a lamb roast being just 14 people. Whole pig roasts need a minimum of 50 people. If you are very keen on pork roasts but are planning on having fewer than 50 people at your event Big Roast can offer a spit roast pork loin option. For more information follow the link – spit roast.

How big is a whole lamb?

Approximately 20 kilogrammes. Even the biggest lamb is half the size of a whole hog making lamb roasts much more appropriate for smaller events. Big Roast will tend to use lambs between 18kg and 22kg depending on the size of the party.

How long does a lamb roast take to cook?

A whole lamb roast will take approximately two and a half hours to cook. As a lamb is so much smaller than a pig our complete lamb roast service will only take between 4 and 5 hours. This will include setting up, carving, serving and clearing away. The same service with a hog roast can take over 7 hours.

How is it best to eat a lamb roast?

A lamb roast is a far more manageable size than a hog roast but still provides the same spectacle and is served in a very similar way. Like a hog roast the lamb should be carved into a soft white roll. Lamb should be served hot with a mint sauce. Big Roast’s cous cous with roasted vegetables, toasted pine nuts, lemon and fresh basil or our courgette, aubergine, red onions, peppers and herb ratatouille, slow cooked in a rich tomato sauce, is the perfect accompaniment to our roasted lamb.

For more information on the salad options described above browse our website or read some of our blog articles for recent events.

Big Roast is London’s leading lamb roast and spit roast service. For more information either email contact@bigroast.com or call 0845 500 5450

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LAMB ROAST EVENT IN BRIXTON

Over the weekend we had a great time doing a lamb roast for a party of forty for a family in South London. As you can see from the photos the 22 kilo lamb was a fair centre piece of the the party, and in fact the hosts had a fair amount of meat that we left them with after the event.

As you can see our machine is easily transported through most houses – and set up in a corner of a back garden. The only issue with this is that the machine needs to be cleaned in the back garden before being taken back through the house – whereas if you have a side gate we can take away the spit roast and clean it off site.

At this event the guests choose to make up their own salads – so leaving us with meat, bread rolls and cooking duties. The mint sauce was liberally distributed and we left with the party in full swing.

As with all our events the guests finished off their evening with our complimentary pack of three wish lanterns from Wish Lantern.

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LAMB ROASTS FROM BIG ROAST

Lamb Roasts are a popular spit roasting option for events where less that fifty people are being catered for, and can also be a great accompaniment to a hog roast for a larger event.

The lambs are roasted on our traditional rotisserie style spit roast machines in the same way that our hogs are cooked. We add in garlic and rosemary later in the cooking to complement the meat – and serve with hearty amount of mint sauce.

With a lamb roast we can also supply roast potatoes. These are par boiled the night before and then roasted in the machine towards the end of the lamb roasting.

Although the weight of a traditional lamb varies during the year, our average lamb comes in at around 22 kilos – and approximately 40% of the weight is servable thereby allowing us to serve around 176 grames of meat per person at an event with 50 people.  Although you miss out on the crackling we assure you that our lamb roasts will make a great central piece at your events.

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