Everyone loves a Sunday roast. In fact, it is so loved such that in the UK, it only falls number two to fish and chips. You see, this meal is like a tradition, yes, like afternoon tea. It brings families and friends together and leaves lasting memories. After all, people who eat together stay together. However, while everyone loves the yummy palate delights, the case is quite different for the cook. He or she will be scratching their head wondering what to do to pull off a good Sunday roast, just like granny used to make. It is a challenging dish to whip together and getting it right to the letter comes with practice.

Here are a few tips to help you pull off a Sunday roast fit for the king’s table:

Choose a good bird

Choose a good chicken. This is where the buck stops. A poor chicken will give you a poor roast. If you buy a chicken that has been raised well, you will realize that it has a richer flavor, the kind that leaves a delightful flavor in your mouth.

The same case applies to the beef, lamb and even pork roasts. However, some of the best-raised meats can be a tad hard to get and you may have to work with what you have.

If this is the case, look for a good recipe for cooking your Sunday roast. If grandma has not shared or left a recipe behind, well, there are more than enough recipes that you can make use of in different resources online.

Sunday roast starts, well, before Sunday

If you want to make a chicken roast that bursts with flavor once it touches the taste buds, then you have to start your preparations the night before. Nothing major though, just sprinkle your chicken with salt all around, cover it with a paper towel and let it stay in the fridge overnight. While cooking your chicken the following day, you can just rub off the extra salt on the skin.

Choose high-quality potatoes  

If you choose the best pork, chicken, beef or lamb and then choose poor potatoes, they will affect the taste. If you are buying potatoes for the roast, pick them by hand.

Choosing the right potatoes is just one thing. You also need to know how to cook them right. For example, if you cook them in the oven together with the meat, they will absorb most of the steam from the meat and become soggy. Thus, you want to avoid that. For many people, timing is the problem. You see, your meat can cool its heels in the rack, but your potatoes need to be served hot and fresh from the oven.

Thus, as soon as you take the meat out for cooling, get your potatoes inside and cook them fast. They do not take long, so they should coincide well with the cooling chicken.

Choose the right fat to use

When choosing the best kind of fat to use to cook your meat, this is not the time to use what you need at home. You may go to all the trouble of selecting the best meat only to kill the flavor completely with a poor choice of fat.

Start by matching the meats with their respective fats. This applies to the potatoes too. In fact, it is recommended that you use the fat that came off your meat or chicken for cooking the potatoes. You can use lard or the dripping fat for beef. For cooking your chicken, you can look for duck fat because chicken fat is quite hard to use. Buy lard for cooking your pork and dripping fat for your beef. Both are easy to find.

Include a good serving of vegetables too

If you do invite family and friends over for the Sunday roast, you may find a few who are vegetarians. It is quite the trend nowadays. Choose high-quality vegetables for roasting. Carrots can be roasted with nigella seeds and coriander for taste. There are more vegetables, most of them local to where you live.

Lastly, you will need good gravy. You can get this from the roasting meat. After removing your meat to cool, just pour the gravy into a separator jug to get rid of the fat, which floats on the gravy.