I love pot roast, roast beef or anything in those categories. I like mine pretty much falling apart and full of flavor. That’s some real comfort food right there. Every time I eat it, I feel like I’m back home at my Mama’s house for Sunday lunch. Mmmm!
Pot roast is one of those things that can be made overly complicated when in reality it should be so simple, my 8 year old could make it effortlessly. You’ll hear to sear the meat first on all sides to seal in the juices and all sorts of other nonsense. Save yourself from extra dishes and effort, ok? Totally not necessary. I’ve tried it dozens of times and the results were not more spectacular at all.
I buy our grassfed beef by the quarter or side from a farmer that does a drop in my city of Sarasota, FL 3-4 times a year. My order comes with plenty of roasts. Oh yeah! We choose grassfed beef because the fatty acid ratios are much healthier compared to steers eating tons of grains (and GMO corn that causes highly pathogenic e-coli) off of feedlots. Improper fatty ratios= inflammation and that’s not cool. I have five kids to care for and homeschool. I don’t have time for that junk, so grassfed it is. You can locate a farmer or a farm market that sells it in smaller portions through eatwild.com .
This isn’t a recipe but a method. You can put whatever root vegetables in with the roast that you want, or none at all. That’s up to you. I love my pot roast over mashed potatoes, so I didn’t put any in the slow cooker, instead I put in about 1.5 lbs of roughly chopped carrots. I didn’t peel them. I just chopped off the ends and cut them in halves or thirds. I also very roughly chopped 2 medium-large yellow onions. White onions and sweet onions would work as would frozen bags of those little organic whole onions.
Many people have had dry pot roast and think they have to add cans of cream of bad science soups and/or packages of salad dressing powdered mixes. This is not necessary! The tenderness comes from the slow cooking itself whether in a slow cooker or in a low 250F degree oven in a covered oven-safe dish.
I do not add salt or anything else to season UNTIL the roast is being served. There’s no need.
Ok, here we go:
I chopped off the ends and roughly chopped the carrots and onion. The meat from my farmer was defrosted earlier in a water bath. I used about 4lbs of meat (2 roasts actually) because I’m going to use the leftovers for something else. The cooking time stays the same though for one or two roasts.
Unwrapped roasts are on the bottom of my slow cooker crock and I just tossed the carrots over it, then the onion. You could mix them, not mix them, it doesn’t matter.
One of my roasts had a bone in it, so this step is not necessary if you do not have a bone. No you don’t taste vinegar in the finished dish, it just pulls the gelatin and minerals from the bone and into the broth. I added just a splash of organic apple cider vinegar here.
Pour in filtered water to just cover the veggies. Put the lid on and cook on high for 5 hours or on low for 8 hours or up to 10. It’s very forgiving. For the oven, do the same thing in an oven safe dish, and bake at 250F for 5 hours covered.
When the roast is finished cooking, put it into serving dishes or plate it up right there. I made the easiest mashed potatoes ever for ours (recipe here) and then topped them with butter and some mineral-rich salt here, then added the onions and carrots and lastly the meat. I poured some of the wonderful juices left in the slow cooker over the entire thing. Lastly, I salted it again on top of everything. You can add freshly cracked black pepper if desired here.
Enjoy!
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