Life of Wry

I know.. I’m 69 and have never made a real pot roast*. I don’t think I could have told you e x a c t l y what a pot roast was, until today. Pretty much, it’s exactly what the name implies: a pot roast.

Duh.

Jim suggested yesterday that I make one. I looked through my saved recipes (that crazy-stuffed basket — well organized, I might add — of hundreds (maybe thousands) of recipes I’ve printed off the internet) and found numerous pot roast recipes (not surprised). Picked two: the Ina Garten one and a Southern Living one, and married them.

First you pat dry, season, dredge in flour and brown the thing (a prime boneless chuck roast), then set it aside:

Then you cook til tender carrots, onions (I used yellow and green), garlic, celery:

Then add red wine, cognac, chicken broth, tomatoes and bundled fresh herbs (I used rosemary only, having just discovered all our thyme got snuffed out by our overgrown sage):

Then add back the chuck:

The pot then moves into a 325 degree oven for an hour, then the temp gets reduced to 250 for another hour and a half. An hour before it was done, I added potatoes.

And… voila, my first pot roast:

It was a thing to behold, and quite tasty. We’ll eat it a couple more times this week and froze two more dinners-worth. That’s 5 meals for two.. for about $50. Nice.

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(*) I have made numerous briskets, corn beef and other beef slab dishes in the crockpot, but I feel like those weren’t real pot roasts.