Pot Roast

Chapter 4: One Pot Dinners - Page 50
Time: 4 1/2 hours
Cost: ~$20

Drew's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Really tasty. The gravy made the dish.

Sara's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Meat was a little plain, but the gravy was fantastic! Pair it with mashed potatoes and anyone you serve it to will love it.

Surprisingly, this recipe was not in the Roasts chapter as I would have expected, but in the One Pot Dinners chapter. Also surprisingly, the picture in the book shows a roast in a pot with lovely little red potatoes cooking alongside it. There are no potatoes in this recipe… methinks the chefs at America’s Test Kitchen changed their minds at some point! The recipe is pretty easy, with only about 30 minutes of active cooking. The oven does the rest... a great meal for company! (especially if you’re like us and ALWAYS seem to be running an hour behind when you have guests over)

First challenge with the roast was getting the correct cut of beef. The recipe calls for a chuck-eye roast, which I had never heard of. Since our Wegman’s doesn’t carry that, we substituted a chuck roast instead at the recommendation of the butcher there. The picture shows a very cube-like hunk of meat that fits perfectly in a pot. Our chuck roast was thick, but much more like a slab than a hunk. So we trimmed off the sides to make it fit in our somewhat small Dutch oven. Never be afraid to improvise!

The recipe starts fairly predictably, seasoning the meat and then browning all the sides to get some nice flavor. Then out with the meat and in with the veggies – a traditional blend of carrots, onions and celery – to cook in the juices from the meat. Some garlic and a pinch of sugar liven up the pot, and then a combo of equal parts chicken and beef stock form the base for the meat to roast in. A sprig of thyme from our herb jungle joins the party (the way some of those plants are growing, “herb garden” just doesn’t cut the mustard), then the meat goes back into the mixture, and the whole covered pot pops into the oven for a few hours. The recipe said 3 ½ to 4 hours, but we found our meat was ready to go by 3 hours. This might have been due to the thinner cut than recommended. Always go by the meat thermometer; in this case once the meat reaches 210 degrees you let it go for one more hour.

At this point, the roast comes out of the pot to rest while you make the gravy. After skimming off excess fat, you reduce the liquid left in the pot for about 8 minutes, then add some red wine and reduce some more. You end up with an insanely flavorful gravy for the roast, which would be totally perfect for mashed potatoes. Unfortunately we discovered around this time that we were out of milk, so we had to make do with a Lipton rice side. Not exactly a perfect side paring for a pot roast, but the gravy made everything good. The meat was fall apart tender, though bland, and made a great vehicle for getting the gravy to your stomach. Mmmmmm gravy. ::drool::