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Different people will tell you about different temperatures and times for the roasting of meat. And you might find that there are huge differences in the information people give you, leaving you not just confused, but thoroughly flummoxed if you actually want to know how to cook that perfect roast you had at your favorite restaurant last week yet have no clue how to go about it. First things first, you can make roast meat at about every temperature possible, it is just that every temperature and time possible will not give you perfect results. Secondly, cooking is more of an art than a science and people also appreciate the results as an art rather than a science most of the time. So what could be perfect roast for you could be slightly rare for my taste and what would be perfect roast for me could be overcooked for you. That said, however, the temperatures and times for perfect roasting of meat given here should let you roast meat the way it is done in good restaurants, but if even this is not good enough for you, then you might have to go back to asking some more.

Let us discuss cooking times first and foremost. In order to cook chicken or other poultry so that it is thoroughly and nicely cooked, you should roast it at a constant temperature of 160C or 325F. In case your oven marks by numbers, then this would be 3 in a gas oven. If you want to roast beef so that it is well done on the outside and rare on the inside, then a temperature of 180C or 350F should do it. This is around gas mark 4 in a gas oven. If you are roasting pork using these temperatures, while it will be cooked, it will look slightly pink. The same might happen in the case of lamb, but if you keep your meat in the oven long enough, that is at least thirty minutes per pound, you will be able to eat it without any danger since by this time, all the harmful bacteria would have been killed.

Coming to cooking times, while I have mentioned earlier that you should at least roast your meat for thirty minutes per pound, meaning you should keep it in for an hour if you are roasting two pounds, let me tell you at the outset that this cannot be sacrosanct. The reason behind this is that cooking times vary a lot based on the kind of oven that you use and its size. So while a gas oven would generally take a shorter time than an electric one, a larger oven would take a longer time than an oven with a smaller cavity. However, the time provided should give you a general idea of when your roast is about to be done. In order to make sure with your own oven, you can keep checking the results at approximately the same time and after one or two attempts, you will easily be able to determine the time period for roasting meat perfectly in your oven.