A Little O/T but How Do You Tell Your Grandmother Her Roasts Suck?

[ghostguy6]

My grandmother takes great pride in her roasts but well to put it mildly.... they suck. She constantly overcooks them to they point they are as dry as shoe leather. Gravy or ketchup cant save them. We joke about them being chipped beef, not because of the recipe but because you probably could really chip a tooth. Not one but two steak knives have met their match from these things. I have shared my recipes with her, explained that you should cook by internal temperature not by the time listed in the pages of some 60 year old cook book. Ive even gone out of my way to cook any roast for a family dinner so she can see what a good one tastes like.

Before I go on a big rant about this, I'm asking, what is a polite way to help her see the light and realize you don't need to dry them out so bad? I cant just straight up tell her without her getting upset but this madness needs to stop.

 

[indaswamp]

I'm not gonna touch that one...

 

[Central PA Cowboy]

Me neither.

 

[SonnyE]

Can't you politely be unavailable, or busy on 'roast day'.
Please be nice to Granny, after all, if not for her, YOU wouldn't be here.
Maybe she needs a new oven that works right? You could be her hero.
Another thought, invite her to your house for dinner. Maybe it's time that somebody else does the cooking?
Many ways to save grace...

 

[Dawg Dude]

I feel your pain buddy. I lived though 2 Great Grandmothers,4 Grandmothers, a Great Aunt, a Mother and a Mother inlaw that cooked that way. The thought was you had to cook it like that or you would get worms! I discovered A1 steak sauce I never looked back. I could eat a skunk cooked over a garbage fire with A1 on it.

 

[kit s]

Invite her over for a sample of your roast. Maybe she will like it and ask how ya did it.....course if she doen't like I am sure she will probably tell you as she probably wont be as gentle on you as you have been for her. Sometimes a person has to see different results than they are used to. Her mom probably cooked it the same way so that's the only way she knows how to cook it. That was my mom and veggies and roasts, that was also my mothering law and ham and turkey's.
Oh you can blurt it out, then duck and run but alas that maybe like opening the old pandora's box.

 

[markh024]

It's grandma. Suck it down and smile. Hopefully desert will make up for it.

 

[myownidaho]

"I'm sorry grandma, your roast sucks."

Now I wouldn't say that to MY grandmother but hey, it's not my grandmother. :eek: :D

 

[jp61]

Maybe you can buy her a good digital instant read thermometer along with a magnetic food-safety temperature guide. You should also buy her some flowers.

 

[PerazziMx14]

Please delete

 

[SonnyE]

I could eat a skunk cooked over a garbage fire with A1 on it.

:eek:

In the infamous words of Mia, 21 months old, after smelling Grandpa's Pickled hot dogs and onions....

YUKKIE!

(Lord, I love a childs honesty.):rolleyes::D

 

[wbf610]

As others have said, chew it as much as you can, wash it down with a smile, and thank her for the wonderful dinner.

 

[noboundaries]

I'm going to take the opposite tact of every poster above. A dry, tough roast tells me it is undercooked, not overcooked. An undercooked brisket or chuck roast will be tough as shoe leather and dry as a bone. An overcooked brisket or chuck roast will friggin' fall apart, and be chalky and crumbly, unless it is close to becoming jerky.

Without knowing what temp she's using and the time involved, all we have to go on is tough and dry. And that tells me the collagen is intact, keeping the muscle fibers bound together. When cooked long enough, the collagen melts, adding juiciness to the meat and making it tender.

At 225-250F, my briskets take close to ninety minutes to two hours per pound to get tender and juicy. At 350F, about half that time, but not before I stick a probe in it to see if it resists or not. If it resists, I keep cooking.

I've been the main cook in our house for quite some time. Early in our marriage I could never get a tender pot roast (aka chuck roast). It always came out dry and tough. Then my wife went to a relative's wedding and the wedding party was thrown a pre-wedding lunch by a bunch of elderly ladies at the church. The pot roast they served was melt in your mouth tender. My wife asked their secret, and one of them said, "Dear, just cook the snot out of it until it falls apart." I followed her advice and never had another tough pot roast. Collagen is the snot.

So say "Granny, I hate to tell you this, but you're not cooking your roasts long enough."

Edit addition: now, if she's cooking a lean cut roast, like rump, bottom round, or cross rib, those are meant to be cooked to a low temp and sliced medium rare like roast beef. Once beyond that point, the brisket and chuck roast advice applies, especially when braising.

We need to know what cookbook she's using, then do the old church ladies in reverse.

Another edit addition: I just looked in the recipe book I used to teach myself to cook. It is the 1965 reprint of the 1894 Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I just looked at several beef roast recipes and all of them give an oven temp and time that would most likely give dry, shoe leather. THAT's why I had problems early in my cooking life until my wife met the lady who understood beef snot!

 

[snakester]

My grandmother takes great pride in her roasts but well to put it mildly.... they suck. She constantly overcooks them to they point they are as dry as shoe leather. Gravy or ketchup cant save them. We joke about them being chipped beef, not because of the recipe but because you probably could really chip a tooth. Not one but two steak knives have met their match from these things. I have shared my recipes with her, explained that you should cook by internal temperature not by the time listed in the pages of some 60 year old cook book. Ive even gone out of my way to cook any roast for a family dinner so she can see what a good one tastes like.

Before I go on a big rant about this, I'm asking, what is a polite way to help her see the light and realize you don't need to dry them out so bad? I cant just straight up tell her without her getting upset but this madness needs to stop.

David stop mooching food of Mamaw.!

 

[lovethemeats]

Let her do it her way. Leave it alone. You want to hurt her feelings. Or take the opposite approach and tell her that her cooking of roasts could be greatly much improved. My grandma would have smack me upside my head and told me to go sit down if she was still living"God rest her soul". Me I wouldn't say anything. Come On! It's your grandma. Give her a hug. Say it was good. And go back home.

 

[indaswamp]

Some things are more important in life than a perfectly cooked piece of meat...

There. I said it.

 

[pops6927]

Cook with her some time. She will teach you things you never knew. Enjoy your time with her! Laugh hearty, eat plenty, help with the dishes, and watch her whip up the dessert she loved to make your mom or dad! (Most of all, find out the difference between a pinch and a dab, and let us all know!)

 

[johnmeyer]

I feel your pain. My late mother-in-law was English, and you know the old heaven and hell joke where the punch line says: "... in hell, the cooks are English." Boiled meat. Yucch.

As to why the meat is knife-dulling tough, when smoking we all know that meat gets fall-apart tender when cooked a long time, and you almost can't over-cook it.

But ...

Smoking (BBQ) cooks at really low heat. If you cook at really high heat (and a lot of those 1940s Betty Crocker books recommended ridiculously high roasting temps), it will get tough and dry out. Cooking it longer at these high temperatures only makes it worse. As I remember, the toughening when using high temperatures has to do with what happens to the meat's protein.

The original nutritionist, Adelle Davis, tried to change the homemaker's thinking in the late 1950s with her various books, such as "Let's Eat Right To Keep Fit" where she recommended cooking meat in ovens set to 275 degrees or lower. Virtually no one listened to her until about forty years later, but she was right.

How to approach grandma? Well, you could offer to "help out" in the kitchen and see if you could fiddle with the oven temps. I'll bet she roasts at somewhere between 375 and 450. And, if it's pork, even higher. My mother and grandmother were scared of pork (because of trichinosis) and always cooked it to within an inch of its life.

 

[SonnyE]

My Mom use to burn water.
We thought that was how food was. Her liver was like shoe soles. But it was 'required eating!'
When my eldest Sister took Home Economics in High School, she came home with a recipe.
I don't remember what it was, but hey, it wasn't burnt! And we found out what food was supposed to taste like.
Obviously (and to some's dismay) I survived.:p

 

[gmc2003]

Sorry I can't help you much - as my G-ma was a wonderful cook. When I would go visit she always had a care package ready for me. Usually her thick homemade baked beans or pea-soup. I really miss those days. She was a tough old Irish girl who stood about 5 feet tall, and got her hair done weekly. I'm 6'6" and would always make sure to mess up her hair. It was kinda like our thing. Never had a bad meal with her. Even on the rare occasion if I did I respected her to much to tell her. I just relished the time spent with her. My only advise is to suck it up and enjoy the time with her instead of changing her.