Mama D’s Best Pot Roast, Ever

We are definitely falling into winter. The days are shorter, the air is colder, and snow has dusted the ground more than once. Hearty comfort food seems like the thing to do. It was time to come to grips with my love/ hate relationship with Pot Roast. Perhaps hate is too strong a word. Maybe I just haven’t had the perfect pot roast. I am here in the winter laden Midwest for the long (cold) haul, so the time has come to find it.

What I’ve always loved about pot roast is how it makes the house smell. My challenge was developing a recipe that tasted as good to me as it smelled. I looked at lots of recipes from slow cooker style to Beef a la Mode and everything in between.

I decided that oven braising would give me the aroma that I loved and would make the apartment warm and toasty too. This also gave me a reason to use my large Dutch Oven. Porcelain clad cast iron, bright red, and weighing in at about 15 pounds, its ability to hold heat evenly would be just the vessel to house my roast. Granted moving it from place to place was an upper body workout in itself, but the effort would be worth it.

I like the traditional vegetable trio of onions, carrots, and potatoes so I knew they would be active participants. I can’t do anything without garlic, and bacon is my guilty pleasure so they had to be in the mix as well. My herb of choice is rosemary which was still growing on the balcony. So, now that I had my cast of characters in place it was time to get on with the show.

The perfect pot roast starts with the perfect chuck roast. Boneless, well marbled, and weighing in at around three pounds it was ready for its closeup. I heated my dutch oven to screaming hot on the stove, added some olive oil and plopped the roast in and covered it with a splatter screen. The browning had to be extreme and the screen kept the kitchen and Papa D from getting too upset. Once it was delightfully brown on all sides, I removed it from the pan and added some thick peppered bacon that I had chopped up. Then came onions. Lots and lots of onions. I let them soften and begin to brown before I added an almost obscene amount of garlic. Once everything looked perfect, I nestled the roast back in. Braising requires liquid to gently surround the roast so I used a combination of beef stock, red wine, and Worcestershire sauce. Simple and traditional, but that can be a very good thing.

All that was left to do was cover it and pop it into a low (300 degree) oven. The dutch oven now had to be weighing far more than 15 pounds so I didn’t pop it in as much as I grit my teeth, held my breath, and shoved it in. It spent the next hour and a half getting extremely happy and perfuming my home beautifully.

I pulled the pan out of the oven (the maneuver was a modified clean jerk) and added some gold creamer potatoes and baby carrots. The cover went on and the pan went back in the oven. While everything cooked for another hour, I iced my biceps and had a glass of wine.

Finally it was time to bring it all together. The roast was perfectly done. Tender and juicy, but holding itself together. I admired its beautiful brown crust as I moved it to the platter.  I lifted all the lovely vegetables out of the pan and heated the golden liquids on the stove adding a splash more of wine to help loosen all the yummy bits. I shook up a slurry of water and flour and whisked it into the gravy. I let it bubble for a few minutes while I cut the roast into respectable slices.

Mama D's Perfect Pot Roast

Print Recipe

Servings

6

Servings 6

Mama D's Perfect Pot Roast Print Recipe Servings 6 Servings 6

Ingredients

• 3 Pound Boneless Chuck Roast
• Salt & Pepper
• 1 Tbsp. Olive Oil
• 3 Medium Yellow Onions Cut in 1 inch wedges
• 3 Strips Thick Cut Bacon
• 6 Cloves Garlic Sliced lengthwise
• 1 Cup Beef Stock
• 1/2 Cup Red Wine Plus a splash more to deglaze
• 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 Pound Yellow Creamer Potatoes
• 2 Cups Baby Carrots
• 4 Sprigs Fresh rosemary
• 2 Tbsp. Wondra flour
• 1/3 Cup Water

Servings:

Instructions

1. Season the roast generously with salt and pepper. Heat a 6 Qt. Dutch Oven over high heat.
2. Add the olive oil to the pan and let it get hot. Add the meat and sear until well browned on all sides. Remove the roast from the pan and set it aside.
3. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the bacon and let it soften for a minute or two. Add the onions and toss to coat. Cook until the onions begin to soften. and brown.
4. Add the garlic and cook a couple of minutes longer. Remove the pan from the heat and nestle the roast back in.
5. Combine the stock, wine, and worcestershire sauce. Pour around the roast. The liquid should come about halfway up the roast.
6. Tuck the rosemary sprigs around the meat. Cover the pan and place in a preheated 300 degree oven. Roast for 1-1/2 hours
7. Add the potatoes and carrots to the pan, tucking them around the roast. Cover and continue to roast until the vegetables are tender, approximately 1 hour.
8. Remove the roast from the pan and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and keep warm. Leave all the liquid in the pan.
9. Place the pan on medium heat and add a splash of wine. Scrape up any brown bits. Shake together the flour and water and stir into the pan liquids.
10. Simmer the gravy until it thickens. Slice the meat. Drizzle with a little of the gravy. Put the rest of the gravy in a bowl to pass at the table. Serve with the vegetables.

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The result was a plate of goodness. The roast was oh so tender and still tasted like the wonderful beef that it was. The veggies were melt in your mouth delicious. We cleaned our plates and filled them again. We made ourselves stop so that we could enjoy Pot Roast sandwiches on another day.