General Cooking Questions

I hope this isn't too pedantic but I've been noticing for a while that adding "off" to a cooking verb has become quite common by TV cooking show hosts.  Since I have not been in a professional kitchen for more years than some of these kids have been alive, I might not be recalling the lingo correctly.  But I recall being taught to roast the meat, fry the potatos,and sautee the onions, not roast off the meat, fry off the potatos,and sautee off the onions.

Did I miss something or has this term "off" added to verbs always been a part of cooking vocabulary and sentence construction?