Over the last few days my cooking challenge has really started to build some momentum. After investing into some essential meal planning hacks, I spent my evenings in cultural exploration. First I got to prepare Salt Fish and Ackee, the national dish of Jamaica with my friend Daniel who grew up there. Then Brittney and I were treated to an amazing authentic Chinese cooking night with our friends David and Sophia who went all out with cool Chinese robes, samples of traditional teas (in the coolest tea set I’ve ever seen) and even taught us some interesting cultural facts as we drank a very delicious (and dangerous) rice wine. Thank you Daniel, David & Sophia for the amazing cultural experiences.

This week I wanted to try something different. I realized that although I was making some pretty fancy and amazing meals, I was also spending a lot of money. One of the big reasons I wanted to learn to be a better cook was so I would eat at home more versus eating out multiple times per week. Looking at my bank statements from the previous week I think I could have eaten at some pretty nice restaurants and saved myself the cooking frustration. Obviously that’s not the goal but with that in mind I thought I would try out some meals that would still be new and challenging but would also offer some cost savings; I would attempt a budget cooking week.

To keep things interesting I thought I would try a home cooking experiment. Rather than just finding cheap, easy-to-make meals (most of which were my go to’s prior to this month anyways), I thought, ‘why couldn’t I attempt one Big meal and then turn the leftovers into 2 more delicious meals?’

After scrolling around the internet for a bit I stumbled across an article about a guy who had done exactly that. He had made himself a giant pot roast, and then the next day turned the leftover beef and veggies into a pot pie and then finally took the remaining beef and turned it into a spicy stew over polenta. This sounded perfect and more importantly super delicious!

Unfortunately where this blog succeeded in teasing appetizing meal plans it failed horribly at giving quality directions on how to make them. In fact the first recipe simply read “Night #1- Traditional Pot Roast with Carrots and Potatoes” and then moves on to night #2.

So just cook a pot roast, how hard could that be? Well after looking into a few recipes online I found the answer, apparently pretty hard… But foolishly I was not deterred and I rushed out to buy the biggest roast I could find. Most roasts being 4-6 lbs I thought “there’s no way I can make 3 meals from an average roast.” So I requested the local butcher cut me a 9 pound roast. “That should cover me,” I thought.

With my giant roast in hand I was feeling pretty confident and fully prepared to role the dice and hope for the best. “I got this,” I laughed to myself.

That afternoon I got a call from my good friend Drew Vincent calling to check on how my cooking challenge was going. With excitement I told him about my 9 pound roast and explained my less than well crafted plan to roast it that night. The line went silent… then a heard a “sigh”, and then Drew simply stated a calm but definite “no.”

“No?” I said, slightly confused.

“No, I’m coming over and I’m saving you from disaster. You don’t know what you’re doing and if you’ve got a 9 pound roast we’re going to make the best dam roast you’ve ever had.” he stated with conviction.

Now sometimes it’s hard to tell who your good friends are, but when a friend drops what they’re doing to come save you from your own certain disaster, that usually means you’ve got a pretty dam good friend.       Or he’s hungry and just really wants a free dinner… Either way though I had a cooking challenge wingman!

Drew gave me a list of ingredients to add to my roast and veggies. We were going to make a Jus sauce with Ox Tail and Wine for extra flavor and have Yorkshire Puddings and Risotto as our sides. This meal was all of a sudden sounding bad ass!

When Drew arrived at my house he had a giant book with him. “This is the best and only cookbook you well ever need to use again.” he explained. “This is the American Test Kitchen cook book. Not only recipes awesome but they tests 1000s of recipes, ingredients, temperatures and methods for everything you can even dream to cook. They explain what worked and what didn’t and why. This is my cooking bible…and I’m ‘lending’ it to you.”

This was awesome! Not only did I have a cooking wingman but I had the secret recipe book of the pros. Drew was hooking it up!

American Test Kitchen: Roast Beef & Jus Sauce

Drew wasn’t understating this book. The section on roasts was 7 pages of trial, error, correction and explanation for success.

Best Roast Ever Notes:

• The perfect roast is cooked evenly through and has an even temperature distribution from core to outside. To accomplish this cook your roast at a low 250 degrees until the internal temperature reaches 130 degrees (medium rare – medium).
• To keep in the juices and to give the roast a nice caramel coating, sear your roast on all sides prior to roasting then let cool for 10 mins
• This will not leave much juice for the Jus sauce so while you sear your roast take your Ox Tail, coat them in tomato paste for flavor and roast them with diced onions and oil for aprox 45 mins (turn Ox Tail half way through)
• Add the roast to the center of the pan of Ox Tail and onions. Add some potatoes and veggies (carrots, celery etc) and cook for 2 1/2 – 3 hours or until roast hits target temp of 130 degrees.
• Remove the roast and tent with foil to rest while you prepare Yorkshires

For the Yorkshires Drew had another trick up his sleeve. Instead of the Test Kitchen Yorkshire recipe he busted out his old school family cookbook recipe that had been passed down from generations. I’ve since asked his permission and he’s allowed me to post it below:

Best Yorkshire Notes:

• Wisk flour, water and milk thoroughly by hand
• Add eggs individually, stirring well after each
• Add salt and stir until light and bubbly
• Scoop one tablespoon of beef fat into each muffin tin and heat in oven (400 degrees) until boiling hot
• Take out and quickly pour the batter equally into each of the 12 muffin trays
• Immediately return the muffin tin back to the oven and bake without opening for 20 minutes
• Reduce oven heat back down to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 mins or until golden brown

Simple Delicious Jus Sauce:

• Take all the juices from the Roast and Ox Tail and reduce it by half on the stove
• Add the red wine, chicken & beef broth and thyme and reduce it again by two thirds
• Pour in some more of the excess meet juice from the roast and cook on high for about 1 minute and viola, perfect Jus sauce

Over the course of the night Drew shared some of his cooking experience. In a past life he had worked in a couple of the top restaurants in Penticton so knew what he was doing and did what he could to whip me into cooking shape.

Drew’s Cooking Notes & Hacks:

• Do a pre-inventory of your ingredients – Bring out all of your ingredients and prep as much as you can in advance or while you have down time. Batch items that cook together or in succession so they are ready to go. If you get to the end and you still have something that’s untouched, you missed something.
• Write down your recipe on a piece of scotch tape and hang it above the stove. Rather than jumping back and forth to your laptop or cookbook your entire recipe will be staring you in the face
• NEVER use the blade of your knife to scrape ingredients off your cutting board. It dulls the knife and doesn’t do wonders for your board. Flip the knife and use the back side.
• NEVER pour spices directly from the container into your dish. One unsteady shake and you’ve ruined all your hard work. Pour spices into the palm of your hand, gauge amount and pour into the dish.
• Role lime’s and lemons before cutting. For extra juice you can even give them a quick microwave.

CAYG

Coming from a professional cooking environment Drew had adopted a pretty serious kitchen etiquette. There was no such thing as downtime when cooking. If you were waiting on your next step you weren’t sitting around, it was CAYG time.

CAYG stood for Clean As You Go and meant I was either scrubbing dishes or wiping counters at any given time until the meal was done. Drew even went as far as to go find my Windex so we could start cleaning my oven and fridge doors…

Suprisingly this actually helped a lot! When the roast came out there was almost no cleanup to do and rather than eating and then being too tired for dishes (subsequently leaving them sit in the sink for days), we just ate dinner and relaxed.

Drew was even smart enough to get the risotto in early so we could eat it as a first course therefore avoiding any potential backlash from my girlfriend for the post 11 o’clock dinner time.

Thanks so much Drew for all your help with this meal. It turned out amazing! (way better than had I attempted it solo).

If you want to connect with Drew he is the Team Leader at the Okanagan Young Professionals (OYP).

Find him @

Now on to the rest of my experiment: Beef Pot Pie and Spicy Beef Stew…