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In English cookery there is a method of cooking meat called ‘pot-roasting’. Its equivalent in French cooking is braising. A piece of meat is put inside a close-fitting pot with a heavy lid (the lid has no air vent). Little or no moisture is added but usually there are some vegetables. Heat is applied to the pot by any means you like; this causes the moisture inside the raw food to heat up and this cooks the food. If you are applying heat from underneath the pot you will have to turn the contents over every half an hour because the food will be hotter at the bottom. So it’s easier to put the whole pot inside an oven where there’s no need to turn the contents over because the heat is all around the pot. Whatever sort of heat you apply it will have to be gentle or else you will dry up all the moisture in the food and burn it. (Originally the pot had hot ashes and charcoal heaped upon it.) Pot-roasted joints are usually cheaper foods, such as boiling-chicken or the cheaper cuts of beef which are eaten well cooked. For best results keep the oven temperature very low, i.e. not above 300ºF. (150ºC.), and allow a long cooking time.

Most cooks put a large knob of fat into the pot and fry the outside of the meat to make it brown before beginning to cook it. A few large chunks of onion or carrot provide extra moisture and extra flavour. For a more complex addition try the mirepoix described on pages. The French cook will always be very attentive when cooking in this way. He looks into the pot and dribbles a spoonful of stock over the meat. The meat must never stand in a pool of water or stock, it must be moist enough and hot enough to make its own steam. Maximum amount of basting with the minimum amount of liquid is the rule. See pages, and, for vegetables braised, pages.

Another way of using this same technique is to wrap a piece of food in heavy paper (or the transparent plastic ‘roasting bag’) and put it into a gentle oven. This food too cooks in its own moist heat. This is called cooking en papillotes and is described on pages.