Latest features Cooking a roast - the experts' guide

Date Published:

19/10/2007

Top gastropub chefs share their tips for cooking the perfect roast. Turns out, it's easy

The stuffing

Stuffing is easy to make and really enhances the roast, says Paul Holmes, executive chef at The Clarence in Balham, Winner of the Evening Standard Pub of the Year award, 2006. It's also the part of the meal where you can have some fun experimenting with flavours. If you're serving a bird, it's fine to fill it with stuffing mixture, but if you don't want to get your hands too dirty, this stuffing roll is a tidier alternative.

The basic ingredient of a stuffing is sausage meat. There are a variety of qualities available to suit your preference and budget.

Place the sausage meat in a bowl with some chopped herbs, thyme is always good, and anything you want to add to give it a personal touch; slivers of garlic or chopped apricots work well. Stir the mixture together.

Onto a work surface, lay out a large strip of cellophane.

Place strips of smoked bacon onto the cellophane as a base, these will form a blanket around the stuffing.

Spoon the stuffing mixture onto the strips of bacon.

Taking hold of the top edge of the cellophane carefully roll the bacon and sausage meat to form a long, bacon covered snake.

Wrap the stuffing snake, with its cellophane covering, in tinfoil.

Cook with the roast for twenty minutes.

Remove the stuffing roll from the oven and discard the tin-foil and cellophane wrappers.

Slice and serve.

Next up: The vegetables