There are dishes that can be served on the table on a holiday and on a weekday: they are quite simple to prepare, but at the same time they look very elegant and unusually tasty. Baked potato with meat is a prime example. The combination of simple and not the most expensive ingredients in this dish allows the chef to dream up on a given topic: slightly complicate the recipe if you want to surprise guests at the festive table, or prepare a very simple dish for a quiet family dinner.
Preparing meat for baking
It all depends on what kind of meat you choose, baked in the oven. Beef, for example, takes longer to cook than pork, and requires more careful processing. We’ll start with her. If your meat is chilled, just cut off all the hard films from it and divide it into portion pieces. The thickness of one piece should not exceed 1 cm. Size also matters: you do not need to make huge "bast shoes". An important point: meat must be cut strictly across the fibers. We carefully beat the portioned pieces with a meat hammer, we try to ensure that each piece has the same thickness over its entire area. In the event that the meat is frozen, you first need to unfreeze it, and then do all the manipulations described above. Prepared beef sent pickle. We will talk about how to make a marinade a little later.
Move on to pork
In order to bake delicious meat in the oven, you must first choose the right grade. Pork neck is best for our dish. Meat from other parts of the carcass can also be used, but it will turn out not so tasty and tender. Moreover, it is very convenient to divide the neck into portions: we cut a chilled or thawed piece of meat across the fibers with a very sharp knife. The thickness of the piece is the same as in the case of beef - 1 cm or slightly thicker. In addition, you do not need to cut the slice: it is already suitable for us in size. In addition, pork does not have the hard films with which beef abounds. We beat off the portioned slices with a hammer on both sides, make sure that the thickness is the same. Processed meat is also sent to pickle.
Mayonnaise Marinade
This, of course, is not the most dietary kind, but it will perfectly cope with its task if the meat is too lean or harsh. Having processed portions in such a marinade, you can bake meat and potatoes in the oven for a shorter period of time. So, we need one jar (250 g) of mayonnaise with a fat content of 67% per 500 g of meat. Open the container and directly into it add ground black pepper and salt to taste. Dried aromatic herbs will also not be superfluous - we add our beloved with a generous hand. If someone cannot live without spicy, for him in a marinade, 2-3 cloves of garlic, passed through a garlic squeezer, will be an excellent addition. Mix our marinade thoroughly and coat each piece of meat with it from all sides. Leave at room temperature for about an hour, closing the container with the meat lid.
Beer Marinade
And this method of pickling is for everybody. Not everyone dares to use alcohol-containing drinks, albeit low alcohol, for cooking. Well, if anyone takes a chance, then he will definitely not regret it. Beer for marinade should be taken as natural as possible, without the addition of alcohol. It is also called "alive." To apply a dark or light type of drink - everyone decides for himself. This is exclusively a matter of taste. Then everything is quite simple: put the meat (1 kg) into the prepared container, fill it with beer (0.5 l) and close the lid. We clean the dish in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, and preferably - at night.
The most popular pickle
This is the easiest and fastest way to marinate meat. It is perfect in the case when you need to bake meat and potatoes in the oven for a family dinner, as the whole process takes no more than half an hour. Better use pork. For the marinade, we need one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, the same amount of soy sauce, two tablespoons of vegetable oil (preferably olive), salt and pepper to taste. Fresh or dried herbs are also welcome: add a small pinch to the rest of the ingredients. We mix all the ingredients with each other, grease the resulting pieces of meat, put them in a bowl where they will marinate, close the lid and leave for half an hour at room temperature.
If you can’t do without mushrooms
Many people love this combination: potatoes, meat, mushrooms. In the oven, as a rule, bake these ingredients, laying them in layers. Mushrooms must undergo preliminary heat treatment.
- Dried mushrooms must first be soaked in cold boiled water at the rate of: 1 liter of liquid per 100 g of dry product. The soaking process will take about 1 hour, then, without draining the infused water, salt the mushrooms to taste and set to cook for 40 minutes on medium heat. Then drain the broth, slightly dry the mushrooms.
- Hostesses are very popular with this type of harvesting products for the winter, such as boiled and then frozen mushrooms. They retain their taste and aroma in its original form, and they are also easy to use then for preparing a variety of dishes: it is enough to defrost the mushrooms at room temperature and lightly fry using odorless vegetable oil.
- Any fresh mushrooms, with the exception of champignons and oyster mushrooms, must be boiled in salted water for at least 40 minutes before use, then drain the broth, and fry the mushrooms in a small amount of vegetable oil.
Ah, potatoes, you are potatoes ...
Pioneers ideal! And not only pioneers. The most common side dish for meat will help in our case make the dish unusually tasty. For cooking, we select medium-sized tubers. We need twice as much potato (and for someone this is not enough) more than meat. If we intend to make our dish flaky, then in the last layer we need to hide the meat under the potatoes. So, the selected tubers of the size we need are mine, peel and cut. Each cooking method requires its own form of pieces. If you plan to bake potatoes with meat in layers, cut the peeled tubers in circles. The thickness of one slice should not be too large: 2-3 mm is enough. In the event that something like roast is being cooked in the oven, we divide each potato into 6 parts, cutting the tuber vertically crosswise. You can also bake meat with potatoes in pots. For such a dish, cut the potatoes into cubes with a side of 1 cm.
Who undresses him, that sheds tears
No, no, we're not talking about an undernourished stripper who, by his appearance, causes tears of pity from the public! It's about onions. If we decided to bake meat and potatoes in the oven, then we can’t do without onions. The number of onions in the recipe directly depends on their size: for 500 grams of meat we take one very large or two medium-sized onions. Thoroughly peel them, wet the knife and onion with cold water (so as not to cry) and grind. And again, size and shape matter: for different ways of baking, we chop onions in different ways. As a rule, all the ingredients of one dish are chopped the same. If potatoes and meat are cut into circles, then chop the onion rings as well - this form is suitable for baking in layers. In the pots we will lay the onion, cut into small cubes. For the roast cooked in the oven, grind the onion in half rings.
Layer by layer - we’ll build yummy
When cooking this dish, it is very important to alternate the layers correctly. Here is an algorithm of actions we offer you:
- The form in which we will prepare our dish is carefully coated with odorless vegetable oil or lined with baking parchment.
- We spread the first layer: potatoes, cut into circles.
- Salt, pepper to taste.
- The second layer will consist of onions, chopped with rings.
- The third layer is chopped and pickled meat. If it was pickled in beer, slightly salted, in the other marinades there is enough salt.
- The fourth layer is mushrooms, which we also preliminarily prepared as described above.
- The fifth layer is onion again.
- The sixth layer is meat.
- The seventh layer is potato.
- The topmost layer will consist of hard cheese, grated, and mayonnaise. We will need 100-150 grams of cheese (someone loves more), and two tablespoons is enough for mayonnaise, the main thing is to evenly distribute them (cheese and mayonnaise) over the surface.
So, we have put together our ingredients: onions, mushrooms, potatoes, meat, cheese are comfortably placed in a baking dish. In the oven, meanwhile, the temperature reached 170 degrees, and it's time to send our dish there. It will be prepared for at least an hour. You need to check this way: with a toothpick or fork we try to pierce the potatoes, if it lends itself easily, the dish is ready.
Pot, cook!
An elegant, tasty and fragrant dish for a festive table is easy to prepare using pots made of ceramics. In addition, the finished dish when serving does not need to be divided into portions, which is very convenient. So, we take a pot, put potatoes cut into cubes into it (fill the space 1/4), then onion (a small handful is enough). Meat pre-prepared (mayonnaise marinade in this case will not work, however, beer too) should be divided into pieces that can easily fit into our container. We spread another 1/4 of the volume of the pot. Mushrooms in the recipe are welcome, but their use is not necessary. If we still use them, then we also lay out a quarter of the volume of our dish. The final layer is again the potatoes. She sprinkled so much so that to the top of the pot there was a distance of 2 centimeters. We put 4-5 peas of black pepper, one bay leaf, a little dill - fresh or dried. Pour boiled or filtered water - not more than a quarter glass. And now a surprise: we will make a lid for our pot ourselves, and it will be edible! We make a fresh dough: 2 cups of flour, 1 egg, salt, mix, add cold water - so that the dough turns out to be tight, knead and make circles out of it, slightly larger than the neck of the pot. Lubricate the lid on the pot, make a hole in the middle with your finger. The dough will also serve as an indicator of the readiness of the dish: if it is browned - it's time to take it out. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and bake the meat in pots for at least an hour.
Have a nice and tasty chat at the dinner table!