Classic Beef Pot Roast
A few weeks ago, when we had that super-cold week in January, I decided to try a new recipe for a comfort classic: Beef Pot Roast.
When I got the chuck roast out to thaw, I originally thought about making Korean shredded beef tacos, which is one of our favorite recipes. But then realized it would be Sunday and that my family would be joining us for the meal. Not everyone in my family enjoys international flavors so I pivoted to this classic pot roast recipe.
To start with, I made a savory paste from soy sauce, tomato paste, anchovy paste, and Marmite.
Perhaps you’re thinking, "Wait, what? Anchovy paste? Marmite? I thought this was a beef pot roast! Why do you add fish and… whatever Marmite is?”
Veggies with umami paste. Toss together and then microwave.
Let me explain. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the fifth basic taste: umami. Foods like tomatoes, meat, cheeses, anchovies, soy sauce, and Marmite have high levels of glutamates which is what our taste buds identify as umami. If you can increase the glutamate levels, without altering the flavor profile, your pot roast will taste even more savory-delicious that it would on its own. When you combine tomato paste, soy sauce, anchovy paste, and Marmite, they form a mouth-watering base for a meaty stew, without overwhelming the beef with other flavors.
“But where do I get Marmite? and anchovy paste?" I hear you asking. These days, you can find them in the international section of most regular grocery stores.
So, I have my umami-flavor paste. Now for the veggies: I used onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and potatoes. In other slow cooker pot roast recipes I’ve used, everything just goes straight into the cooker. But I often find that the onions aren’t cooked very well… they’re kind of crunchy at the end of cooking. But I want my onions to be meltingly tender at the end of cooking. Sometimes, the carrots and celery are still a bit crunchy, too. To give them a head start on cooking, I combined onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in a large bowl and tossed them with the umami paste I made earlier. Then I microwaved them on high for 5 minutes. This begins the process of breaking down the sturdy cell walls of these crunchy vegetables so that they are sure to be tender at the end of cooking.
Then I transferred the vegetables to the slow cooker, added the potatoes, and poured on some chicken broth and some red wine. I seasoned the roast with salt and pepper and nestled it into the vegetables in the slow cooker.
After 8-ish hours in the slow cooker, the meat was shreddable… which is my preferred method for serving roasts. (If you like to slice your roasts, start checking to see if a fork can pierce the meat with little resistance around 7 hours.) Once the roast was cooked, I removed it to a cutting board to rest for 15 minutes. Time to shred and serve!
The roast turned out great! Juicy meat, meaty flavor, tender vegetables, savory sauce… yum!
And, as a bonus, it didn’t require a lot of time to prep, nor did I need to sear the roast before starting. This makes it doable for weeknight meal, especially if you make the paste and cut the vegetables the night before you want to cook.
You can get the specific recipe here: Classic Beef Pot Roast
Maybe you can try it out on a late-winter cold snap, which we are bound to have sooner or later!
