2020 has seen me in the kitchen… a lot. Sometimes I’m happy with a long and complicated menu, and other times, I prefer a one pot meal. Like my pot roast, which I like to cook up using my enamel cast iron dutch oven.
I don’t have some great story about my pot roast, it’s not a recipe handed down from generation to generation, I don’t even recall my grandmother ever making it for me. Or my mom, though I’m sure she did at some point. My dad never cooked, so don’t even ask.
But my wife and son love a good pot roast, my daughter was just as happy without. But after months of quarantine, even during the summer, sometimes I just ran out of creativity and was ready for a good old pot roast.
My recipe has been taken pretty aggressively from Ina Garten’s pot roast recipe, with a few edits for my particular cooking style and personal tastes.
For instance, she is a big fan of leeks, included them in a lot of her recipes. I’m not, and tend to skip them. She also calls for cognac, which I don’t keep on hand, so I skipped. And chicken bouillon cubes? C’mon, no thanks, those all strike me as overly processed and gross and not at all what I’m looking at including with my meals.
But the general idea is what I’m looking for when searching for recipes, something that can get me close enough to what I have in mind, and that is exactly what her recipes provides.
This pot roast recipe reminds me quite a bit of either my chili recipe, or beef stew. They all spend some time getting the meat started, do your chopping, start the veggies, add the meat back in, plus liquids, and then spend hours doing something else while it all cooks down and gets tender and delicious!
Homemade Pot Roast
Equipment
- dutch oven
Ingredients
- 1 4-5 lb chuck roast, seasoned with salt and pepper
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp avocado oil, or olive oil
- 6 carrots, chopped
- 4 stalks of celery, chopped
- 2 onions, chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, pressed or crushed
- 2 cups red wine
- 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes with liquid
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme
Instructions
- Season the beef chuck with salt and pepper on all sides to your tastes, I'm fairly aggressive
- lightly dust entire roast in flour
- preheat your oven to 300 degrees F
- heat oil in pan over medium to medium high heat, and once hot, sear the roast on all sides, will probably take a few minutes per side
- while roast is browning, chop your vegetables
- when roast is browned nicely on all sides, remove from dutch oven and set safely aside
- add fresh oil if needed to dutch oven, then add carrots, onion and celery and cook for about 10-15 minutes
- then add 1 tablespoon salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper to vegetables, along with garlic, cook for another 5 minutes until vegetables are a bit tender
- add the wine and bring to a boil
- add the chicken stock and tomatoes and bring to a boil
- add the thyme and beef roast to the dutch oven and bring back to a boil
- place into the oven for 3 hours
- remove pot from oven and set roast aside on a cutting board to rest
- using an immersion blender, pulse a few times to smooth your sauce out to your desired chunkiness
- if you are worried about the thinness of the sauce and want to thicken it, scoop a cup of sauce from the pot and add 2 tablespoons arrowroot or flour and stir to combine and then add back in to the dutch oven, and then stir in completely and bring to a boil before lowering the temperature back to a simmer
- with the roast resting, cook the sauce down to reduce it until it reaches your desired thickness
- slice the roast, serve with sauce
Delicious