Simple Old Fashioned Pot Roast
Nothing is quite so classic and homemade as a good pot roast. Who doesn’t like pot roast? Doesn’t the idea of serving up pot roast leave you with images of a classic 50’s era mother, serving everyone a generous helping of meat and potatoes in her crisply starched dress and apron? Picture June Cleaver or Mrs. Cunningham and you know what I’m talking about.
Well, for years I felt rather miserable about my pot roast. I would alternate between making terrible roast beef and avoiding it altogether. Determined, I would get out my Betty Crocker cookbook, carefully read, study, and calculate directions and cooking times. I would buy the exact cut of meat instructed, cook it exactly as directed, and end up with tough, chewy beef. Ugh.
A few months or a year later, once the memory of the previous disaster was forgotten, I would attempt it again, with precisely the same results. Ugh.
Finally, I figured it out! A couple of years ago, my truly incredible husband signed up for a free issue of Cooks Illustrated. This is a publication born of the PBS show America’s Test Kitchens. Or maybe the show was born of the magazine, I’m not really sure, but they are connected. Anyway, hubby watched an episode where they made Italian Four-cheese macaroni and he promptly signed up for a free issue of the magazine in order to access their website and the recipe for the macaroni.
As with many “free issues,” we received several free issues, and still get one sporadically, apparently sent in hopes that we will subscribe. (I rarely subscribe to anything.) In one of our free issues, there was an entire article about cooking beef. I read with great zeal. Would the secret to pot roast be revealed? It was!
Guess what folks, I am going to reveal it to you! Here it is:
Unless the cut of beef you are using is a prime cut - like prime rib or most steaks, you have to cook the beef at a low temperature way beyond the cooking time necessary to just cook the beef. This is what my Betty Crocker cookbook didn’t tell me. It only told me how long the beef must cook in order to be “done.” But with any kind of roast that has - well, there’s no nice way to say this - stringy ligaments and connective tissue, the roast must be cooked for many hours in order to soften and “melt” this connective tissue. (AKA - gristle, chewforever, etc.)
This is how I make pot roast now and it ALWAYS turns out well:
Allow about 8 hours for cooking time. Longer is fine. Less and you might still have chewy meat. For me, this means I want to get it going by 10 in the morning so I can serve at 6 o’clock. This might seem a little long, but better safe than sorry.
That’s all folks! Enjoy!
Grilled Honey Mustard Chicken
Slapping some meat on the grill for supper is great for many reasons…
It TASTES great
It’s quick
Very little clean up
You can offer a variety of foods without putting forth any more effort
If you’re lucky, the man of the house will cook it
The downfalls are rather limited…
Your supper could catch on fire
If you are the cook, you may have to wear shoes and go in and out while preparing the meal
The last downfall is one I run into every now and then… I like to put chicken breasts on the grill, but run out of different ways to fix them. Face it, you will get tired of BBQ sauce eventually and you will want something different. We are not huge lovers of BBQ sauce in the first place, if I make BBQ chicken too often, I can count on getting some complaints.
Honey Mustard Chicken is a good alternative:
Grilled Honey Mustard Chicken
3 chicken breast halves
2 T. lemon juice
2 T. soy sauce
1 T. worcestershire sauce
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. mustard - any kind, even plain yellow works well
1/4 t. paprika
salt and pepper to taste
Butterfly the chicken breasts so there is an even thickness. Pour the lemon juice, soy sauce, and worcestershire sauce into a shallow bowl or a ziploc bag. Add about 1/2 cup or more water, and put the chicken in there, too. This is your marinade. I do this every time I make chicken, no matter what I’m going to do to it later. The lemon juice and soy sauce work as tenderizers.
Several hours later, mix the honey, mustard, and seasonings together. This is your basting sauce, which can also be used as a second marinade. Transfer your chicken (not the juice, just the chicken) to the honey-mustard mixture. Let it soak that up for an hour or so. If you want to serve some extra sauce with the chicken, mix up some more and keep it away from the raw meat.
Next, heat up that grill. Turn it all the way to high and let it get good and hot - at least ten minutes. Then turn the heat back to medium-low and put the chicken on. You can use a brush to baste some of the sauce onto each piece. After about 5 minutes, flip the chicken breast pieces and brush some more sauce on. After another 5 minutes, cut into the center of the thickest piece to see if it’s done or not.
This is really good served with a spinach salad or any fresh vegetables. Garlic bread goes well with it, too.
Enjoy!
What a Butter Crock!
I like to use real butter. My husband got me away from margarine years ago. Now that I have learned about partially hydrogenated fats, I am glad that I have used butter all of these years.
Not that I’m saying butter is good for you. It’s not. But I personally believe that margarine is probably worse. Good oils, like olive oil, are infinitely better than butter or margarine, but you gotta have something to spread on your toast, bread, etc.
The trouble most folks have with butter is that you keep it in the refrigerator, and when you want a little on your toast it’s too hard to spread. You have to either warm the butter up in the microwave - which makes a mess - or butcher your toast trying to spread cold butter on it.
A couple of years ago my friend Martha introduced me to the butter crock. This is how people stored their butter before the wonderful invention of the refrigerator. Basically, the butter is packed into a crock and inverted into a little bowl of water. This forms an air-lock so that no bacteria can touch your butter. Then you can allow your butter crock to sit out at room temperature. No more cold hard butter. No more butchered toast. No more buttery puddles in your microwave.
Check it out: This link will take you to an informative page about butter crocks and there are a few links on it so you can order one for yourself if you like. I have used mine daily ever since I bought it. About once a week, I empty it, run it through the dishwasher, and re-pack it. Sometimes I think I would use two of them, so I could switch them out more easily when one needed to be washed.
That’s all folks — If I cook something good today, I’ll let you know about it tomorrow….