LIVER AND BACON WITH OR WITHOUT ONIONS - THE AMBROSIA OF THE GODS

[Pauline]

But to refer back to the statement to use the meat juices (fat removed) I ask do you mean just pouring off most of the fat, and some of the juices with it, or have you a better method? And why do you not eat gravy made with a colourant addition?

I don’t add any fat when roasting a joint, so there isn’t usually any noticeable fat to remove from the juices. But you can get separating jugs for getting the juices without the fat.

Also, I don’t see any need to colour gravy, and things like Bisto have loads of salt etc added, and I don’t want to be pouring salt all over my roast.

 

[peter]

In my next newsletter I'm going to be writing about Brown & Polson. To some of you the name will mean nothing - to others.....

 

[Katie Bee]

do you serve roasts and similar meals WITH OR WITHOUT GRAVY?

It depends! Beef yes, chicken no just bread sauce. Lamb and pork husband has gravy and I usually do not.I think that is because we always had mint sauce with lamb and apple sauce with pork when I was young so I am not used to gravy with those.
The mint sauce has now been replaced by redcurrant jelly preferably homemade.

 

[Bob Spiers]

It depends! Beef yes, chicken no just bread sauce. Lamb and pork husband has gravy and I usually do not.I think that is because we always had mint sauce with lamb and apple sauce with pork when I was young so I am not used to gravy with those.
The mint sauce has now been replaced by redcurrant jelly preferably homemade.

Yes I can see why you put gravy on the back shelf (perhaps beef excepted) and may explain why I bring gravy to the fore. I have tried all the 'should have this or that sauce with this or that) and in time have disliked them all. So no apple, bread, redcurrant, cranberry, and especially no MINT with lamb or added into anything whilst cooking. I am as averse to adding such sauces as it seems Pauline is to adding salt.

I have on occasion accepted a spoonful of redcurrant (or similar) jelly on the rare occasions in the past when I eaten duck, goose, pheasant and even rarer venison, mainly because I find the flavours to fatty or rich for my palate, but otherwise I prefer -if not gravy - a good accompanying sauce made by the Chef.

Each to his/her own of course.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I don’t add any fat when roasting a joint, so there isn’t usually any noticeable fat to remove from the juices. But you can get separating jugs for getting the juices without the fat.

Also, I don’t see any need to colour gravy, and things like Bisto have loads of salt etc added, and I don’t want to be pouring salt all over my roast.

Thanks Pauline, I think "pouring salt all over my roast" qualifies in rhetoric terms as 'Hyperbole' but certainly explains you have a problem with salt. My own problem is the reverse; the lack of salt. Eating ready-made meals (yes we do try these occasionally), often eating in restaurants or meal invites where the household chef has deliberately withheld salt from potatoes or greens (for reasons similar to your own) which forces me to use a table salt cellar to compensate...and it never does!

Apart from eating fish and chips (home cooked or bought) - when one applied salt and vinegar before eating -salt was always added during the cooking process and enhanced the flavour of food. In these politically correct- sodium and glucose scaremongering times - not to mention Vegetarian and Vegan influences - I find the need to ignore all such and emulate the WW1 slogan of 'Keep calm and carry on'

 

[Margery]

I find the need to ignore all

Bob, as they say "one man's meat is another man's poison".

 

[Bob Spiers]

Bob, as they say "one man's meat is another man's poison".

How true Margery, and never more so than now.

 

[Margery]

How true Margery,

Great to "speak" to you in real time. Friday evening here and we are watching Escape to the Country, It's Dorset tonight.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Great to "speak" to you in real time. Friday evening here and we are watching Escape to the Country, It's Dorset tonight.

Yes agreed, and that also is one of my Ozzie sisters favourite programmes and reminds me on Skype when she watches one based in Kent.

 

[At home in NZ]

Seeing as I am being inundated with emails advising me of yet another reply to a thread with the heading of this discussion I thought it’s time to put my tuppenceworth in.

As far as salting the water when boiling vegetables goes, it is something I used to do because that’s how I was taught to cook. When I ran out of salt one time I found there was no difference in taste, I stopped salting the water after that.
However, I would not dream of cooking rice or pasta without salt in the water.

When we have chicken or pork we use a store bought garlic and herb salt which we individually add to the food before eating it.

I used to make gravy with Oxo because, again that was what I was taught. I never took a liking to Bisto. I prefer to add butter to boiled vegetables on my plate and I make a gravy from a packet for ‘the man’.

I was brought up with gravy on most meals as well as horseradish with beef, mint sauce with lamb. Cranberry with turkey, at Christmas, but I never developed a liking for it and have never bought it.

I would never consider pouring gravy over liver and bacon because I like crispy, not soggy, bacon.

I was composing the above while Margery and Bob were talking. We have watched the moon eclipse tonight, quite spectacular.

It's past my bedtime now.

 

[Pauline]

Thanks Pauline, I think "pouring salt all over my roast" qualifies in rhetoric terms as 'Hyperbole' but certainly explains you have a problem with salt.

I don't have a problem with salt as such (that is, not a medical problem) but having cut right down on it around 40 years ago, I just don't really like it any more. So pouring salty gravy over my food seems to me like a good way a ruining it!

Thinking about it, the only roasts I tend to cook these days are chicken or turkey We don't eat red meat any more, but even when we did I never made 'brown' gravy. Instead we usually had horseradish, mint sauce or apple sauce as appropriate.

 

[peter]

I would never consider pouring gravy over liver and bacon because I like crispy, not soggy, bacon.

I've never known gravy to be poured over liver at the table - liver and onions are cooked in gravy, though I use flour and a dash of Marmite rather than gravy-browning, and (if available) a cheap can of ale rather than water.

However the first step is to fry the onions and set aside, the second is to coat the liver with seasoned flour and lightly fry it before setting aside. It's the left-over seasoned flour that goes into the gravy, which is made in the same frying pan. I arrange the liver in the bottom of a casserole dish, add the onions on top, then add the gravy. The casserole then goes into the oven for 20-30 minutes to finish cooking the liver.

Bacon is grilled, either separately or on top of the liver so that the juices add to the flavours. My bacon is always crispy.

 

[Bob Spiers]

as horseradish with beef, mint sauce with lamb. Cranberry with turkey, at Christmas, but I never developed a liking for it and have never bought it.

I forgot about horseradish with beef - something my father loved and I for a while believed I did too but it didn't last long - and my father's other love -indeed absolute insistence - that one had to have Mint sauce with lamb. That was fine in the days Mom made her own and Dad grew it, but I did not. So after Mom died and he came to us and we happened to be serving lamb (my wife cooked in those days) woe betide if we had forgotten to buy a jar of proprietary Mint sauce. I recall one occasion when it was too late to pop out and buy a jar, so recalling a neighbour grew same, I called on him and 'cadged' a few Mint sprigs. My wife, remembering her mother making Mint sauce, chopped up the mint, added vinegar and all was well with the world.

Luckily Dad did not like Cranberry sauce probably because we never had Turkey at 'C' as kids. We always had Chicken and usually our own as we had a few hens. I recall the visit of a grand Uncle each year to kill a hen in time for 'C' dinner as Dad could never bring himself to do so. As for Bread sauce we never had that as a child, and I had no idea how it was made for many years. I think my (English) sister was the first to initiate me, as she did Dad when he stayed with them one year. He asked what it was and pulled face when he tried it and declined any more. As already mentioned, I never took to it either but I think my wife enjoyed it.

I do have one passion for a condiment and that is for 'Colmans' English Mustard. I buy the small jars and replenish regularly to ensure the mustard stays fresh. I used to by it in powder form and made up some each time (as Mom did back in the day and Dad insisted to the end was the only way to serve mustard). But this did not find favour with my wife who preferred the ready made. So as we both enjoy Mustard spread on Ham in sandwiches we only now buy Mustard in made-up form.

I would never consider pouring gravy over liver and bacon because I like crispy, not soggy, bacon.

Here we part company because not having gravy served with or poured over liver is as bad, possibly worse, than people who eat chips with gravy. The dish I remind is -as the heading - Liver and Bacon with or without onions. I seem to recall you are an HP addict (no bad thing I might add as I too like HP brown sauce) but you are taking the very soul out of the dish not to have delicious onion gravy served with your Liver and Bacon. The only part of bacon which I concede some like crispy is the fat element and with back bacon not too much of that. Otherwise bacon was never meant to be cooked to a crisp.

Crispy bacon is an American influence and you only have to think about a BLT sandwich and they way bacon is served in just about every Diner in the USA. Your Liver and bacon dish hinges more on crispy bacon than Liver and, not forgetting of course the HP sauce.

Get thee behind me Satan...but as Dick Emery would have said: "I like you really"

 

[Susan48]

delicious onion gravy served with your Liver and Bacon

My mother cooked liver and bacon regularly when I was growing up, the liver was always lamb's and the bacon crispy. The onions were not part of a gravy, but sliced thinly and then fried slowly until caramelised and served as an accompaniment - the best bit as far as I was concerned. Gravy was always made with Bisto and thickened with an extra spoonful of flour. The liquid was the water the vegetables had been cooked in. My father was the one who had to have gravy with meat. I disliked both gravy and custard, but it was more of a texture thing than the flavour as any sauce thickened with flour or cornflour developed a skin which I refused to eat.

 

[At home in NZ]

I've never known gravy to be poured over liver at the table - liver and onions are cooked in gravy, though I use flour and a dash of Marmite rather than gravy-browning, and (if available) a cheap can of ale rather than water.

i don't pour gravy over food at the table, I do it while serving up when there are only the two of us. Obviously I would put gravy in a gravy boat if we have guests.

My liver and bacon does not include onions. I buy chunks of liver because that's the way they sell it in the butchers here in NZ and I slice it quite thickly.
I coat it in flour (no seasoning) and fry it in oil, the bacon goes into the same pan.
The gravy is made separately which I pour onto the man's serving. I usually do mashed potatoes and occasionally will pour a smidgeon of gravy onto my serving of that, otherwise I have HP sauce. Thus, avoiding soggy bacon.
Crispy bacon is my own choice because I do not like the fat half cooked. I have never heard of it being an American influence.

And, quite often we will have Brussel Sprouts with our liver and bacon.
I cut the bottom off the sprout, remove the outer leaves, cut a cross through the bottom and boil them, without salt.
My grandmother, who died in 1968, taught me how to prepare and cook fresh veg when I stayed with her during school holidays. Granddad had an allotment, I would accompany him to the picking of veg for 'tea' then help to prepare whatever it was.
Tea is in inverted commas because that's what the evening meal was called in those days. These days I call it dinner.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I've never known gravy to be poured over liver at the table

Although I no longer do this I once had a fetish (probably not the right word but will suffice) when I took over the cooking, to serve things in dishes (potatoes, greens), a serving plate (meat) with the gravy in a gravy jug because I thought it was more civilised, and not just when we had guests.. Secondly, and likely the main reason, my wife has such 'picky' tastes, that to cook anything inclusive was asking for trouble as she wanted to choose for herself so side dishes were 'de rigueur'.

Move forward many years, long married and knowing each other's tastes and just the two of us most of the time, I know what to include in the cooking process and what to still serve separately. So although I experiment in how to cook something, and what to cook, my Liver, Bacon and onions are now amalgamated in the cooking process and served in a pan or dish. My wife will pick and choose as she ever does and likely use a slotted serving spoon, I on the other hand use an ordinary serving spoon and take it as it comes... not to mention a second helping. I think the Jack Sprat nursery rhyme sums up things nicely.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I would like to take up the topic of BACON cooking, not that it will change how others go about it - as most seem to follow the American influence of reducing bacon to a cinder in the cooking process - but hopefully my narrative will air reasons why this was never the way things where done in the past, and we should (if we don't already) return to the same practices. Here are my own influences.

First influence was my father and his love, indeed passion, for the fat content of meat. The fattier the better and despite his persuasions that 'we didn't know what was good for us' this never caught on with me or my younger sister, although my middle sister (now in Australia) admits to being a bit like Dad and eats the fat content of steaks, but not of Pork. When I tell her I prefer Fillet steaks because there is no fat, she tells me that is the most flavourless cut of all, and Rump second. On the subject of bacon however, she likes her bacon to be cooked properly and reminds that is how her late French husband liked bacon to be cooked.

Second influence was knowing a trained cook. Indeed she trained at the same School as Gary Rhodes ( Thanet Kent) either alongside or a year above or below. It was she who told me how she despaired at how the British copied the Americans in crisping up bacon. When I said many disliked bacon fatty streaks (my wife in particular and myself to an extent) she said there were ways around (not that she ever practised them as this went against the principles of the way she was taught). One was to 'weight down' the fat streaks when frying, or to elevate the fat streaks closer to the grill. But most of all judge the cooking process by the lean content, not the fat.

Third, and final influence, the proprietor of a Fast Food Trailer in the car park of my local B&Q. When I first retired I took on the task of painting and decorating the house and at that time was not into cooking, so once, twice a week I stopped of for a bacon 'Sarnie' (for the uninitiated -and there can't be many in the Forum of British origins, except perhaps for those brought up in the south - that meant a decent sized crusty roll. The end result of waiting for the bacon to be fried on a large flat grill plate (it was all back bacon), having a natter about this and that, and applying the sauce of choice to the finished product, produced the tastiest meal you could ever imagine. The important thing to note was that the bacon was NEVER crispy and I noticed he held his long spatula over the fat streaks to cook them a little more but leave the lean content cooked and NOT over cooked.

So to conclude, crisp if you have to the fat content of bacon (or cut it out as my wife has been known to do with kitchen scissors) by whatever means you can, but do not frizzle the lean content.

Of course if Crispy Bacon is still your choice then sadly there really is no hope left for you. But perhaps you are kind to children and animals, so have a good day regardless.

 

[peter]

i don't pour gravy over food at the table, I do it while serving up when there are only the two of us. Obviously I would put gravy in a gravy boat if we have guests.

My wife prefers to pour the gravy on herself (if I do it for her, it's always too much), so we put the gravy jug on the table.

Crispy bacon is my own choice because I do not like the fat half cooked. I have never heard of it being an American influence.

When I was growing up we always preferred the bacon fat crispy. Unfortunately in the US they don't have proper bacon - what they sell is mostly fat; they cook it to a cinder and serve it up cold.

Tea is in inverted commas because that's what the evening meal was called in those days. These days I call it dinner.

Because my father always did night work we had our main meal at lunchtime, which we naturally called dinner (after all, it was always 'school dinners' in those days, not 'school lunches'). If we had a cooked tea we called it high tea, but this was a very rare occurrence. I was also conscious that some other people would have called it supper.

Later on, when I had my main meal in the evening it was dinner. In other words, for me dinner was the main meal of the day whenever it was taken.

 

[Bob Spiers]

If we had a cooked tea we called it high tea, but this was a very rare occurrence. I was also conscious that some other people would have called it supper.

I am not sure how or when my daughter chose to call her own evening meal Supper but she does which perplexes my wife (her step mother) but I've given up trying to say she means Dinner. She knows my wife and I always eat early evening (between 5-6pm) and call it Dinner. On the few occasions when invited for a Sunday Lunch at someone's house or in a Restaurant, we may have a 'Teatime snack' (as we tend to get hungry at that time anyway) but even that does not constitute Supper. As a child Supper might be a digestive biscuit and Ovaltine or Cocoa half an hour before bedtime. Mind you that was arguable as we had different bed times so it may have been an hour before mine as the eldest. I cannot as a child recall a High Tea, but on Sundays as we ate at Lunchtime we always sat down to Tea around 5pm. (Usually a salad of some type followed by Jelly or Blancmange).

I never cease to be amazed how late people eat on the Continent. I know in Italy they tend they tend to go out for Dinner around 8pm or even later and can be seen often with young children in tow. By British standards most would have been in bed but not sure what constitutes bed time these days.

Later on, when I had my main meal in the evening it was dinner. In other words, for me dinner was the main meal of the day whenever it was taken.

I agree totally with that hence comments above.

 

[peter]

I never cease to be amazed how late people eat on the Continent. I know in Italy they tend they tend to go out for Dinner around 8pm or even later

I doubt we ever have dinner at home before 7.30pm, and 8.15pm is about average, though we sometimes eat after 9pm. Partly it's because we haven't adjusted from the days when one or both were commuting, and partly it's because my wife often has to see clients in the evening.