How To Make The Ultimate Slow-Cooked Beef Pot Roast

Today I'm going to show you how to make my ultimate pot roast. The ingredients we'll be using today are a five pound chuck roast, carrots, yellow onions, russet potatoes, celery, fresh rosemary, garlic cloves, freshly ground black pepper, oregano, granulated garlic, and granulated onion. Also we'll be using some Sutter Home Capernet, canola oil, better than bouillon beef base, and some cornstarch. The first thing that we want to do is chop all of our vegetables. This is about the size I'm looking for. I'm going to cut that in thirds and cut those pieces in half and half again. So that's about what we're looking for for the potatoes. Nice big healthy chunks. After peeling the onions I'm just going to come in and cut it in half and then cut the parts like so. I want to keep these really big. We're going to have a layer of onions underneath our roast and we're also going to mix some more in with our carrots, potatoes, and celery. Okay I've sliced up some of these garlic cloves. This might be about, I don't know, maybe six or seven garlic cloves. And I'm just going to come in and give this just a rough chop. I'm going to be cooking this dish in my nine quart liquorice cast iron enameled french oven. And before we get started I want to take a layer of these onions, just place them on the bottom of the pot to provide something for the pot roast to sit on during cooking. The next thing I want to do is to combine my onions with my carrots, celery, and potatoes. And I'm going to do that in my lodged 15-inch cast iron skillet. The reason I've combined these ahead of time is I want to put a little bit of oil on them and I'm just going to season them lightly before they go in with the meat. I'm going to take a little bit of our canola oil and kind of pour it in. Now you could use olive oil for this. I would probably use extra light olive oil because I don't really want the olive oil taste in this dish. I'm going to go down a little bit of that, a little bit of black pepper, some granulated garlic, granulated onion, and just a tiny bit of oregano. Okay, so now those are nice and evenly mixed. Oil is coating all of it and nicely seasoned. The next thing I'm going to do is sear the meat. To do this I'm going to be using my 13 and a quarter lodged cast iron skillet. I'm going to preheat this over medium-high heat. Okay, the skillet is preheated and I'm going to add a bit of canola oil, maybe about three tablespoons or so. Get that good and spread around. We're going to add our roast and we're going to sear it on all sides. I'm going to flip this and look at that sear. If you don't brown your pot roast before cooking it all the way, you miss out on a whole layer of flavor. The more that you can get browned, the better it's going to taste. Okay, I'm going to transfer this into our pot now, like so, and that is pretty textbook on how to sear a pot roast. Before we put the vegetables in the pot with the roast, we're going to season this roast a little bit. I'm going to go over with a little bit of black pepper, just on top, some kosher salt, and not a lot of salt because we're going to add a broth to this that has salt in it, so just want a little bit. That's enough. A little granulated garlic, some granulated onion, a little bit of oregano. I'm going to go down with some of my chopped garlic. All right, that looks good. Now we're just going to take our carrots, onion, celery, and potatoes and start placing it all around the roast. I don't want to cover the roast. I just want to have as much of it around it as I can. All right, that's looking pretty good. Let's move on. To the pot roast, I usually like to add about four cups of liquid. I like to do something a little bit different and use beef broth, but when making my beef broth, I use Sutter Home Cabernet. Now, we're going to use about two cups of this. Let's see how much is left. All right, it's about a three cup. Let's go ahead and use three cups of that. Okay, and with this Better Than Bouillon beef base, we're going to add three teaspoons of that, and I'm doing heaping teaspoons, so actually it'll probably end up being about four. Okay, and now with this, I want to add a cup of water. I'm going to take that and whisk it all together. I think for my own liking, I'm going to add one more scoop of beef broth, and to this, I think we're going to add a little bit of black pepper, and in here, we're also going to add some of our garlic. Good. All right, now we're going to pour this right in our our roast. Okay, about now you might be asking how much liquid would be too much. My one rule of thumb is you never want your liquid to come above your roast, okay? Never want your liquid to come above your roast. Now, in this size of a vessel, I could use four cups. If what you're cooking in is smaller, you may not need that much liquid, so never go above your roast. Now we're going to add some of our fresh rosemary to this. Don't want a real strong rosemary taste, but rosemary mixed with beef and cabernet is just awesome. Okay, last but not least, we're going to top this off with some pats of butter. Okay, that's it. I'm going to cover this. Our oven is already preheated to 250 degrees. This is going to go down for about five hours, and then we'll check it for tenderness. And it looks great. Looks great. Let's kind of test this for tenderness. See where it's at, and you can see that's just falling apart. And now we're just going to cover that and let it rest. Okay, next what I'm going to do is I'm going to remove all the vegetables from the pot. I'm going to try to strain off as much liquid as I can. And these vegetables have absorbed the taste of the beef and the broth and the wine, and so those are going to be great. And so what I'm going to do is put these in the oven on broil for a little while, and we're going to get a nice little char on these vegetables. Okay, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bring this to a boil. I want the sauce to reduce a little bit, just to kind of bolden the flavor and get a little bit thicker. And when it's reduced a little bit, I'm going to go ahead and add a little bit of water and cornstarch, just to thicken it a little bit further. Okay, this is about three quarter cup of water, and I've put three tablespoons of cornstarch in this. I'm just going to pour it in incrementally until I achieve the thickness that I'm looking for. Okay, we're going to let that reduce while our potatoes continue to brown, and then we're going to put it all together and serve it. Okay, the broiler in the oven put a nice brown on the potatoes, and man, that looks really, really hearty. So we're going to move on to plating. We're going to be plating in a vintage Birmingham Stove and Range number five skillet. Okay, for those of you all who know your cast iron, this is a BSR Red Mountain Series skillet, and it has been preheated to about 400 degrees. I like using these because it really does keep your food warm, and it doesn't go cold on you in the Look at that. Beautiful. Really don't even need to cut it. I could probably just tear it apart, but look at the inside of that. Nice and tender. So we're going to plate that like that. You don't want to be stingy. Maybe we'll get a little bit more. And now we're going to ladle some of our gravy over here. Okay, we're going to garnish with a little bit of green onion and a tiny bit of freshly ground black pepper, and along with this, I'm going to be serving some collard greens that I cooked in chicken stock, and we'll give that just a splash of pepper and a splash of kosher salt. Maybe a little bit on the meat too. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. The Culinary Fanatic's Ultimate Pot Roast. Thanks.