Yes to browning. However, it seems as if everyone is adding the vegetables up front. IMO, all you get is overcooked mushy veggies. I much prefer adding the veggies only for the last hour
…
Use veggies in two batches, include early for flavor to sauce, remove then add fresh later to actually eat
Also try Beef Carbonnade (Flemish beef stew). Use a lot of onions and dark belgian ale…the 30 minute cook time for the onions is necessary. We prefer to omit the brown sugar:
2 lb. beef chuck, cut into 2″ x 1⁄2″-thick slices
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1⁄4 cup flour
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
4 slices bacon, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced lengthwise
2 cups Belgian-style ale, like Ommegang Abbey Ale
1 cup beef stock
2 tbsp. dark brown sugar
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
3 sprigs thyme
3 sprigs parsley
2 sprigs tarragon
1 bay leaf
Bread, for serving
Season beef with salt and pepper in a bowl; add flour and toss to coat. Heat 2 tbsp. butter in a 6-qt. Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in batches, add beef; cook, turning, until browned, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate; set aside. Add bacon; cook until its fat renders, about 8 minutes. Add remaining butter, garlic, and onions; cook until caramelized, about 30 minutes. Add half the beer; cook, scraping bottom of pot, until slightly reduced, about 4 minutes. Return beef to pot with remaining beer, stock, sugar, vinegar, thyme, parsley, tarragon, bay leaf, and salt and pepper; boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until beef is tender, about 1 ½ hours. Serve with bread.
One thing I like about Colicchio’s short rib recipe is that he braises with vegetables that will get discarded after imparting their flavors. The dish is finished with a second set, which can even conceivably be of a slightly higher quality/presentability (e.g. plating it with baby carrots or pearl onions, while using larger carrots and onions for the initial braise).
I strongly advise the use of a chuck roast.
I refer to the Time-Life The Good Cook series for inspiration in many cases. A Pot Roast is kind of an intuitive recipe for me, but I usually include Bay Leaf, Onions, Garlic, Red Wine, Celery, Carrots, Potatoes (veggies added later in the braising process), and I will add fresh herbs, Veal Demi-Glace, and a bunch of butter at the end.
Thanks. In hindsight I misread this the first time to say that browning was the step that ruins it, not that skipping the browning was ruining it. Makes sense.
Nice touch, haven’t thought about that. I’ll have to try this when pot roast season arrives. I always brown my chuck roasts. And always with bacon fat. I’ve never sensed that it makes the roast taste “boiled”. Deglaze with some red wine. Cook larger chunks of veggies (onion, carrots, celery) just a bit, add seasonings bay leaf, couple of cloves of garlic, whatever else I feel like at the time, and cook at low temp in the oven until tender. Add good beef stock to cover the meat. Throw a bit of glace in there, too.
I don’t believe there many absolutes in comfort food. There are a lot of family traditions in roasts, stews, soups and such. My mother was a great home cook and I use basic recipes and tweek them as I see fit. The two batches of veggies may end up in my repertoire.
JD
I believe someone mentioned it up thread but I will typically save some of the veggies added in the earlier round and blend them with whatever juices remain at the end. It has a bit of a thickening effect to the sauce, in addition to pending some flavor.
I do this for turkey gravy with onions, shallots, mushrooms, carrots, parsnips that I roast with the turkey.
Made this over the weekend. Yum. The pistachio salt is a an inspired addition. It was rightside up when we ate it 
America’s Test Kitchen had a show where they demonstrated that there is really no need to brown the roast by manually searing it up front. The Maillard reaction starts at about 285 F so as long as your oven is up that high, you’re good for browning, especially if you crack the lid. You should, however, flip the meat at some point to expose the side that is in the liquid. I would suggest doing that at the point when you add your veggies, which usually don’t take as long to cook and should be added later in the process anyway (those added purely as aromatics to help the sauce can go in from the beginning). I have found that browning the roast this way gives a much more complete and even browning than trying to sear an irregular piece of meat on a flat pan or having to sear all 6 sides of beef cubes (which takes forever).
Exactly. Well, you’re missing the crucial celery. And I prefer a 50/50 blend of reduced stock (not quite demiglace) and wine). And the veggie timing that Chuck Miller mentioned. But even without those flourishes, it’s hard to mess up. Grass fed chuck is cheap, too.
A couple tablespoons of freshly ground dried porcini doesn’t hurt, though.
Well, the surface of the meat has to get to 285, not at all the same as the oven being 285. If the oven is at 285, the meat’s surface will eventually get to 285, but I wouldn’t want to wager an overdone roast on how soon that happens.
This is a very different recipe which I liked a good deal; the berry flavor goes right through the brisket.
From Mark Bittman:
“POT roast is one of the simplest main dishes to cook, but it usually involves a fair amount of chopping onions, carrots, celery and other ingredients to add flavor. When it’s made with cranberries, which need no prep work and are a natural companion for beef, the result is a robust, appealing and unusual pot roast.
When the idea came to me, I knew it was sound; what I did not know was that this recipe would go through more incarnations than I care to count.
I began by cooking the cranberries with sugar, because, well, that’s what you do. But I found the dish too sweet, so I added vinegar. Although this was much better, it seemed ludicrous at first to waste time and energy on dueling flavors, so I eliminated both the sugar and the vinegar. The resulting version, however, was one-dimensional: starkly sour.
I eventually learned that the dish is balanced best when the sourness of the cranberries and vinegar are offset by the sweetness of sugar and orange. This is not an unusual combination, though the process of arriving at it was more than a little mysterious. And the experiments yielded a couple of other happy refinements.
I found that dusting the meat with some of the sugar made the browning process go faster and created a caramelized residue that was deglazed by the vinegar when I added it. This lent great complexity to the finished dish.
Most pot roasts get much of their flavor from the juices exuded by the meat itself; that’s why tough, slow-cooking cuts like brisket or chuck are usually preferable. But since the meat’s contribution here is minimized by the powerful cranberry-orange-vinegar combination, a cut that cooks faster, like tenderloin, works perfectly. This reduces the usually lengthy cooking time to just over an hour, especially if you cook the meat medium-rare, which in itself is a nice touch.
The only disadvantage is that tenderloin is much more expensive than brisket, but there is so much less shrinkage that it’s not as painful as you might think. In fact, two pounds of tenderloin will serve four quite nicely; you would need more than that with brisket or chuck.”
POT ROAST WITH CRANBERRIES
Time: 1 1/4 hours, or more
1 tablespoon butter or extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 2-pound piece tenderloin, or 3-pound piece chuck or brisket
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup sherry vinegar or good wine vinegar
1 12-ounce bag cranberries
1 orange
Cayenne to taste.
- Put butter or oil in a casserole or skillet with a lid, and turn heat to medium-high. Put sugar on a plate, and dredge meat in it on all sides; reserve remaining sugar. When butter foam subsides or oil is hot, brown meat on all sides, seasoning it with salt and pepper as it browns.
- When meat is nicely browned, add vinegar, and cook a minute, stirring, then add cranberries and remaining sugar, and stir. Strip zest from orange (you can do it in broad strips, with a small knife ovegetable peeler), and add it to pot; juice orange, and add juice also, along with a pinch of cayenne. Turn heat to low, and cover pan; mixture should bubble but not furiously.
- Cook, turning meat and stirring about every 30 minutes. Tenderloin will be medium-rare in about 1 hour, or when its internal temperature is 125 to 130 degrees; cook it longer if you want it more done. Chuck or brisket will take 2 hours or longer; it is done when tender. Taste, and adjust seasoning if necessary. Turn off heat, and let roast rest for a few minutes, then carve and serve, with sauce.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings. Correction:
The recipe with last week’s column, about pot roast with cranberries, omitted instructions for using the sugar that was left after the meat was dredged in it.
I have been making Ina Garten’s for some time now. Superb.
I also add a couple of three dried Ancho’s to my pot roast. I break off the stems shake out the loose seeds and throw in pot when I add the liquids (guiness, wine, stock whatever is around). Then pour the liquid into a fat separator, defat and blend the anchos into the liquids put the liquid back in with the roast and veggies and let sit overnight. Warm the next day with the veggies and gravy. The anchos thicken things nicely.
Tried the Mississippi Pot Roast tonight. Really easy and tasty.
I like Cook’s Illustrated simple pot roast recipe from 2010. Made it last weekend. They suggest being lazy and doing “low temp” browning (aka don’t let meat be submerged in liquid so it browns in oven), but says it does taste a little better if you brown it first before putting in the oven. Blending the mirepoix with the de-fatted juices makes a quick, but flavorful gravy. Also salting the meat for 1-4 hours before hand helps a lot too. Balsamic vinegar is an important add as well.
1 (31⁄2-to4-pound) boneless beef chuck-eye roast, pulled into two pieces at natural seam and trimmed of large knobs of fat
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large carrot,chopped medium (about 1 cup)
2 onions, minced
1 celery rib,chopped medium (about 3⁄4 cup)
2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 2 teaspoons)
1 cup beef broth,plus1 to 2 cups for sauce (or veal stock, or “better than bouillon” concentrate)
1⁄2 cup dry red wine,plus 1⁄4 cup for sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 sprig plus1⁄4teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
Ground black pepper
1 tablespoonbalsamic vinegar
1 pound carrots,peeled and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces (OPTIONAL)
1 pound parsnips, peeled and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces (OPTIONAL)
-
Sprinkle pieces of meat with 1 tablespoon salt (11⁄2 teaspoons if using
table salt), place on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet, and let stand at room temperature 1 hour. -
Preheat oven to 300F.
on stove: Heat butter in heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium heat. When foaming subsides, add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Add carrot and celery; continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes longer. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in 1 cup broth, 1⁄2 cup wine, tomato paste, bay leaf, and thyme sprig; bring to simmer. -
Pat beef dry with paper towels and season generously with pepper. Using 3
pieces of kitchen twine, tie each piece of meat into loaf shape for even cooking. -
Nestle meat on top of vegetables. Cover pot tightly with large piece of foil and
cover with lid; transfer pot to oven. Cook beef for three hours flipping halfway through cooking, and add carrots, parsnips, and potatoes. Continue cooking until beef is fully tender and sharp knife easily slips in and out of meat, about 30 minutes to 1 hour. Once pot roast and vegetables are fully cooked, transfer large pieces of optional carrot, parsnip, and potato to serving platter using slotted spoon, cover tightly with foil, and proceed with recipe as directed. -
Transfer roasts to cutting board and tent loosely with foil. Strain liquid
through mesh strainer into 4-cup liquid measuring cup. Discard bay leaf and thyme sprig. Transfer vegetables to blender jar. Allow liquid to settle 5 minutes, then skim any fat o surface. Add beef broth as necessary to bring liquid to ~ 3cups. Heat to simmer on low-medium heat. -
While sauce heats, remove twine from roast and slice against grain into
1⁄2-inch-thick slices. Transfer meat to large serving platter. Stir chopped thyme, remaining 1⁄4 cup wine, and vinegar into sauce and season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon half of sauce over meat; pass remaining sauce separately. -
Transfer roasts to cutting board and tent loosely with foil. Strain liquid
through mesh strainer into 4-cup liquid measuring cup. Discard bay leaf and thyme sprig. Transfer vegetables to blender jar. Allow liquid to settle 5 minutes, then skim any fat o surface. Add beef broth as necessary to bring liquid
Made a beef bourguignon with grass fed chuck roast and plenty of robust red wine in the Instant Pot last week, along with mashed potatoes. DELICIOUS! One of the best we’d had. Beef was so tender.
I would recommend getting an Instant Pot, lots of recipes out there now. Best thing ever for cooking meat. Making a “smoked” brisket in it tonight. Will see how it compares to our usual 2 days in the sous vide plus smoking.