Ready to roast

Roasting is a way to prepare comfort food at its best — good food, simply prepared, without a lot of gussying or gimmicks. It also cozies up the kitchen on a winter evening.

That "roasted" aroma and flavor are part of the caramelizing effects of dry heat, said Tara Bench, who did lots of roasting and other cooking during the six years she spent at Martha Stewart Omnimedia Inc.

As a senior food editor, Bench developed recipes and stories for Martha Stewart Living, Kids, Weddings and Everyday Food magazines. Bench left her post last May to freelance in food styling and recipe development for other magazines, such as Real Simple and All You. While visiting her family in Orem during the holidays, Bench offered some cooking classes.

In her class on roasting, Bench demonstrated some of the techniques from her roasting story that ran in Martha Stewart Living a couple of years ago.

Bench cleared up one misconception: Roasting is cooking with dry heat. It's the same concept as baking, although that's a term usually associated with pastries or cakes.

When you're truly roasting, you don't cover the meats or vegetables, or put a lid over the pan. When people make a pot roast, that's not really roasting but "braising," because moisture is used to steam and cook the meat.

During roasting, the melting fat in the meat adds juiciness and flavor. The heat browns and caramelizes the carbohydrates, giving it the "roasted" flavor. Vegetables are sweeter, and onions and garlic lose their bitter bite.

A few things to remember about roasting:

• It's best on tender cuts of meat. Look for roasts with a lot of fat marbled throughout. Or look for a tenderloin cut, which doesn't have a lot of fat but is very tender, Bench advised.

In her class, Bench used an eye of round roast. Cuts that come from the animal's legs and shoulder are tougher, and those are best slowly braised in a little liquid.

• Cut food in uniform pieces so it cooks evenly.

"This is why you tie a roast together, to create uniform cooking," Bench said. "Or why you tuck in the legs of the chicken, so they're not sticking out and getting burned."

• The meat is usually placed on a metal rack that fits inside a shallow roasting pan, so dry heat can surround the roast.