Low & Slow Pot Roast

A pot roast is something that reminds me of home, my mother, and Sundays. For some reason I thought that I would never be able to make a roast but in reality, it is one of the easiest things I have ever made. My parents purchase half a cow from friends that own a cattle farm. I found a large chuck roast to the the start of the show.

Low & Slow Pot Roast

(Revised from Ree Drummond)

Ingredients:

• 3-5 pound chuck roast
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 carrots, peeled and cut in 2-inch pieces
• 3 large russet potatoes, cut in large chunks
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• lots salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. Liberally sprinkle onion powder, salt and pepper on the chuck roast.

Heat te olive oil in a large pot or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the carrots potatoes to the pot browning them on all sides. Remove and set aside.

Add more oil if needed, and place the meat in the pot to sear to brown on every side for 1-2 minutes. Remove the roast to a plate.

With the pot stil hot, add in the red wine to deglaze and scrape the bottom of the pan with a whisk.

Place the roast back into the pot and add the beef stock and enough water to cover the roast a little more than halfway. Add more salt and a pinch of pepper. Add in the carrots and potatoes.

Put the lid on, and roast for 3 hours for a 3-pound roast or 4 hours for larger roast. The roast will be read when it is fall apart and tender.

I was astonished that I had made this delicious dinner. The meat was SO tender and just fell apart, and the potatoes had soaked up all the juices to make them mouth watering. My dad was also amazed and the boyfriend said that he was impressed. If my men are happy, I am happy.

Burger Nirvana

The cheeseburger can be a flawless sandwich when done properly. Sadly, most people equate a burger with what they’ve been fed at McDonald’s or 5 Guys. A burger should not be greasy, it should not be flat, and it should most certainly not come from a package of ground beef that you’d find in any grocery store. The reasons for not buying mass produced ground beef are well documented, but not very well publicized. We bought the meat grinder attachment for our stand mixer after reading that NY Times story and haven’t looked back. I have yet to buy store packaged ground beef since that day. Other than the obvious health benefits of grinding your own beef you can tailor your meat to specific fat requirements and use a multitude of high quality cuts of beef from ONE SOURCE. It may not be obvious but since you are basically eating a ground up steak, you can cook it to any temperature you want (Read: cook it to medium rare).

As I previously mentioned, my parents gave me a wonderful birthday gift this year. I know that the majority of people who read this don’t have a sous vide at their disposal, but that’s not going to stop me from using it and posting preparations for it. I will predict that this tool will be used in a large amount of home kitchens in the very near future, it’s super easy to use and the results are mind blowingly delicious.

I started with a trimmed, chopped, and freshly ground 2.2 pound chuck roast that I seasoned with salt and pepper. I got 4 hand formed half pound burgers and a little extra. When forming your burgers you don’t want to abuse them, form them gently with your hands, you don’t need a pressing device or a ring to make flawless shaped patties.

Gently place the burgers into a food safe vacuum seal bag and vacuum seal it.

Toss that into your sous vide, preheated to your desired doneness (Read: medium rare), in my case it was 128 degrees fahrenheit. Put the lid on and let the machine work its magic for about 5 hours, and it most certainly is magical.

If you cooked beef, when you pull the bag out it is not going to look pleasant. Basically it will look like an unappetizing reddish grey hunk of beef.

After removing the burgers from the bag it is very important to pat them dry with paper towels. When you go to brown them, the residual moisture will lower the temperature of the pan too much and you won’t get a proper Maillard reaction to give you the familiar smell and taste of seared beef. The first thing I noticed when I picked them up was that they seemingly did not lose any weight on cooking like a grilled burger would. Most of the juices stayed within the burger. This theory was confirmed when I found an analysis of cooking a steak sous vide.

Preheat a pan until it is literally just starting to smoke because its so hot, add a bit of canola oil and brown both sides for about 45 seconds and you are ready to go. Don’t forget to melt your cheese, like I did this time.

After taking one bite of this beauty I don’t think I’ll ever be able to cook a burger in another way. It was so tender and juicy and flawlessly cooked from edge to edge that there really is no way back. The process is so simple, there is basically no way someone could screw it up.

Sorry for the slightly blurry picture but I was so overcome with burger joy that I couldn’t hold the camera and the burger properly. Please take my word for it, it was perfect. I think in the future I will start to use several cuts of beef using a particular ratio of chuck:sirloin:strip or something along those lines, just to play around with the flavor a little more, since all the science of actually cooking it has been perfected by this wonderful device.