Making your food go further: roast beef 2 ways

Roast beef isn't something we eat very often in this house. Don't get me wrong, I love it - but I'm not quite as good at it as my mum and it's just a bit too expensive to be overcooking. I mean really, who wants to eat grey, leathery meat? And then I cottoned on to pot roasting a joint. A brisket specifically.

Brisket is one of those cuts of beef that used to be really cheap. And then people started using it more widely and the price has risen. However, in good news it's amazing in leftovers - my cottage pie was labelled fantastic this week.

I pot roast my brisket using this recipe every time. It's infallible, quick to get on and in the slow cooker and really doesn't take any particular skill on my part (so it's ideal for a busy Sunday). Thinking about making your food go further, it doesn't just provide leftovers in the form of the meat, but also the stock and veggies - both of which made their way into the Cottage pie this week.

I take out a pint of stock from the slow cooker towards the end of cooking and bubble that up in a pan for a bit to make our gravy, so there's no need to do any separately.

As it's National Yorkshire pudding day this weekend I'll include my old faithful yorkshire recipe - I've only recently transcribed it to actual measurements as growing up we made it in a jug and just added milk to this line, flour to that one... This makes enough for 2 nights of yorkshires, or alternatively puds with your roast and pancakes/ fritters for lunch.

Yorkshire puddings

70g plain flour
100ml milk
2 eggs
Sunflower oil or fat for the pan

Preheat your oven as hot as it will go
Beat the flour, eggs and milk into a batter and leave to stand. I normally do this an hour or so ahead of when you want to cook them
Put your yorkshires pan (I say this like we have a dedicated pan - it's an ancient fairy cake tin) in the oven with a teaspoon of sunflower oil or fat in each dip. Allow to heat up for at least 5 minutes or until the oil is smoking
Fill each dint with batter, put on the top shelf in the oven and leave for 15 minutes (don't open the door!) Enjoy, with your roast beef.

The leftovers this week went into cottage pie, based on this recipe of mine - as I mentioned, I used the leftover stock from the slow cooker and topped up the carrot and onion with the leftover carrot, turnip and parsnip from the pot roast. Topped with mashed potato and grated cheese, this was definitely a hit.

+