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!
Add comment December 29th, 2006