The Foodie Press: Pot Roast is Good for the Soul

Listen, I know I’ve been complaining a lot about the weather the last few weeks, but the snow never fails to take me by surprise. And it’s not the good kind of surprise, like getting cake when you weren’t expecting it or finding $20 in your coat pocket. It’s really unpleasant, like getting a bucket of ice water tipped over your head. Actually, it’s similar to getting a bucket of ice water tipped over your head in more ways than one, to be honest. Days where the temperature drops well below freezing and the clouds drop several inches of frozen precipitation into your life need some serious pick-me-up food, and for me, pick-me-up food is hearty, hot, and filling. So here’s a Remley-family classic for The Foodie Press: pot roast.

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs of chuck roast
• 7 russet potatoes (cut into halves)
• 7 big carrots (cut into halves)
• 4 stalks of celery
• 2 onions
• 1 lb of mushrooms (sliced)
• sprig of rosemary
• sprig of thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
• beef broth
• salt and pepper to taste

In putting together both this meal and this post, I was essentially informed that pot roast isn’t an absolute science, and that it’s incredibly customizable depending on your audience. For example, we put in a potato for every person that was going to be eating dinner tonight, plus two extra for the pot (hence 7 potatoes) since we’re firm believers in leftovers. Also, since I really like carrots, we added extra. So figure out what you like best and add it in! Having more people for dinner? Add more meat! You get it.

Directions:

1. Rub the chuck roast with salt and pepper and then sear it in a hot pan. This helps get it started cooking and helps to seal in the flavor of the meat.
2. Add your meat to your roasting pan, then fill the pan with beef broth until it’s almost halfway up the cut of meat. You don’t want to completely submerge the chuck roast once you’ve added all the ingredients, so make sure that you don’t add too much broth. Slice your onions, adding one into the broth. Put the second onion and the minced garlic on top of the ground chuck. Then put the lid onto the roasting pan and put it in the oven at 300 degrees. We suggest cooking the pot roast an hour for every pound of meat you have, so we cooked ours for three hours.
3. When you have 1.5 hours left to cook, add in your halved carrots and mushrooms. After another 30 minutes, add the potatoes (which should be peeled and cut into halves).
4. After the three hours is up, check to see if everything is cooked through; your potatoes should be soft, but not mushy, and the meat should be almost falling apart.
5. Serve and enjoy!

While our pot roast was cooking, however, I did manage to snap some shots of the snow so you can see just how well-deserved this meal was.