Yesterday I made a Yankee style pot roast - you know the kind, a chuck roast browned and
simmered, with roasted potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms and a rich gravy? Oh yeah. I found the recipe online and because of the ingredients used to season the roast, the finished product (mostly the gravy, not the meat) turned out to be very salty. It was too salty for me, and my Mom couldn't even have tolerated one bite. But everything else about it was perfect.
A lot of old fashioned cooks probably know this trick -- I was not sure it would work, but I remember someone saying that potatoes soak up salt. You can salt and salt and salt the little buggers but it just disappears into that starchy potato-ness without much effect.
So I stored the gravy from the roast separately (from the meat and vegetables, after cooking), and tonight I put that into a saucepan and added a peeled and diced russet to it. The gravy was very thick (almost completely a solid after it cooled), so I also added a little water. I brought it a boil then simmered it for about 30 minutes. I added a little more water to keep it fluid, and after thirty minutes or so of cooking and another 30 minutes or so of sitting there resting, I fished the potato chunks out of the gravy with a slotted spoon, leaving as much of the gravy in the sauce pan as possible. Then I rinsed them with a little bit more water, swished that around amongst the tater chunks, and poured that "gravy-rinse" back into the gravy in the pan. I then tossed out the potatoes -- along with all that sodium they'd soaked up. The remaining gravy is perfect -- all that lovely beef flavor intact and not salty at all.
You could use this same idea with other liquid foods that are overly salty, whether accidentally or otherwise. I was happy to be able to figure out a way to "save" that gravy - it's just not Yankee Pot Roast without it.
Buen Provecho!
 |
| Classic American Comfort Food |
A lot of old fashioned cooks probably know this trick -- I was not sure it would work, but I remember someone saying that potatoes soak up salt. You can salt and salt and salt the little buggers but it just disappears into that starchy potato-ness without much effect.
So I stored the gravy from the roast separately (from the meat and vegetables, after cooking), and tonight I put that into a saucepan and added a peeled and diced russet to it. The gravy was very thick (almost completely a solid after it cooled), so I also added a little water. I brought it a boil then simmered it for about 30 minutes. I added a little more water to keep it fluid, and after thirty minutes or so of cooking and another 30 minutes or so of sitting there resting, I fished the potato chunks out of the gravy with a slotted spoon, leaving as much of the gravy in the sauce pan as possible. Then I rinsed them with a little bit more water, swished that around amongst the tater chunks, and poured that "gravy-rinse" back into the gravy in the pan. I then tossed out the potatoes -- along with all that sodium they'd soaked up. The remaining gravy is perfect -- all that lovely beef flavor intact and not salty at all.
You could use this same idea with other liquid foods that are overly salty, whether accidentally or otherwise. I was happy to be able to figure out a way to "save" that gravy - it's just not Yankee Pot Roast without it.
Buen Provecho!
No comments:
Post a Comment