Here is the meal after I added the potatoes and more carrots.
And now the finished product. The beef was fork tender and as you can see the potatoes, parsnips and carrots crispy on the edges.
Joe and I are aficionados of pot roasts. We literally grew up on them. Both of our Sunday dinners at home were pot roasts...or chicken occasionally. Joe used to go to his first wife's family Sunday dinners. His mother-in-law would invariably fix a pot roast to feed the big crowd of children. The weekend before my marriage, my Mom said, "Well, you'd better learn to cook...have Clyde over for dinner...I'll teach you how to fix a pot roast." Little did she know that Clyde didn't like her pot roasts. He politely ate his portion. The first years of our 50's marriage found us eating hamburgers and fried chicken. Our spouses have both passed away and here I was marrying this man who used to be a meat cutter. Pot roast is still one of his favorites. I love cooking for him. He has tried to diet, but with me around it's hard to do.
Yesterday, I fixed his favorite Sunday meal...with a few little tweaks of my own. The top picture is the pan that my son got me for Christmas this year. It is a Haegar Pottery product. It's called Natural Stone by Haegar. I love this heavy pan. I have cooked lasagna in it, a ham, and now a pot roast. Things really taste so much better, when cooked in this pan. Here is the recipe for my version of the old fashioned pot roast...dolled up a bit.
Not Your Mama's Pot Roast....exactly as I did it...
I seasoned a 3 1/2 -4 lb. pot roast with sea salt and coarse black pepper.
Put it in a hot non stick skillet with 2 Tbs olive oil and browned it.
Put it in a 13 by 9 heavy casserole.
Put 1 sliced red onion and 6 med carrots cut in one inch pieces on top and around the sides.
Pour 2 cups red wine over it along with 2 cups of a good beef broth. Liquid should cover meat...if not add water.
Add 2 Tbs parsley and a dash of Thyme and 6 chopped cloves of garlic.
Cover with heavy foil.
Put in a pre- heated 375 oven and bake for 2 hours. No peaking!
While it is baking I cut up more carrots.. cutting them in quarters lengthwise and doing the same with parsnips (4). I put them in the fry pan and added a bit more beef stock to the pan along with salt and pepper. I put the top on and just cooked them till al dente.
When the two hours are up...you turn the oven up to 400 and peel and quarter 6 potatoes. I put the potatoes along with some olive oil and salt and pepper in a bowl and tossed them to cover them all with the seasonings and oil.
Put the carrots, parsnips, and potatoes all over the top and season with salt and pepper and parsley. Leave uncovered now. Put in the 400 oven and then turn the roast every 15 minutes for another hour. Watch the roast now...so it doesn't get too brown. The veggies will fall to the bottom, when you turn the roast over and get all brown and the ones touching the sides of the pan will be crispy.
Now the roast and veggies are done. Take them out and arrange on a hot platter. Make gravy with the juices. The best gravy, because of the natural juices and that wine....really not fatty. This was such a hit at our table...I thought that I would share and also keep it on my blog, so I can refer to the recipe again. Now that's a lot of food for the two of us. I put the leftovers away carefully and tomorrow we can have leftovers. Any meat remaining...I will make a couple of barbeque sandwiches.
I have a love for cooking. I like to cook things that sit on the stove or in the oven and simmer for hours. The house smells so good all day and a meal with leftovers is a bonus. I am a fan of Ina Garten. I watched her, when she ran the Barefoot Contessa and was a guest on the Martha Stewart Show...years ago. I watch her now on the food network. She has such an easy going manner in her kitchen and she takes the difficulties out of cooking and makes it seem easy. I am inspired by her...I'm a big fan.
Balisha
