Recipe: Snow Day Pot Roast
Nov. 22nd, 2010 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaSnow day pot roast! Because I wanted something hot and hearty and comforting.
Not a proper recipe, but:
Enough for two people with generous leftovers. (We'll have pot roast sandwiches tomorrow.)
Slice up some onion, about half a good-sized yellow one. Wilt it in a bit of oil over high heat, alongside about a tablespoon of tomato paste, stirring frequently. Add a glug of red wine (1/4 to 1/3 cup?) and reduce until the red wine has the consistency of a syrup. Add a cup of orange juice, a sprig of rosemary, a bit of salt and pepper. Simmer until thickened. Set aside.
(As always, this is infinitely variable. Substitute a liquid you like better, substitute an herb you like better, swap out the onion, add vegetables... you know, whatever.)
Defrost a chunk of pot roastable beef. (We used about two pounds, which, again, is more than a meal for the two of us, but is about perfect if you like leftovers.) Salt on all sides. (I actually quartered it lengthwise to increase surface area, for the salting and the browning and the cooking in sauce.) Get a good heavy pan (I use a cast iron skillet), put some oil in the bottom, and heat over high heat until it spits when you flick water in it.
Sear the meat on all sides until well browned. Remove from the pan. Quickly deglaze the pan with another quarter cup of wine, then pour the wine-and-meat-juices into the onion-and-orange-juice sauce.
Cook according to your favorite pot roast method. Now that I have a sous vide, I vacuum seal the meat and sauce together, and cook at 175F for at least 4 hours, or ideally more.* Before I had a sous vide, I would dump the meat and sauce into an oven-save vessel (cast iron dutch oven is nice), cover loosely, and bake at 250F for 3-4 hours, topping up with liquid if it looked too dry.
* - The sous vide sites recommend at least 12 hours, but I rarely think about things that far in advance, and I will tell you: four to six hours makes a perfectly lovely pot roast.
About half an hour before dinnertime, wash half a pound or so of bitty potatoes. (I used some bitty fingerling potatoes so small they were bite-sized with no cutting at all.) Toss with oil and salt, roll out on a baking sheet, and bake at 350F for half an hour. (If you still have the meat in the oven, don't worry, turning up the heat for the last half-hour won't hurt it. Just make sure it doesn't boil dry or anything.)
When the meat is done, fish it out of the liquid (don't throw out the liquid! it is delicious!), let it rest about 10 minutes just to let it firm up a bit, then slice thinly against the grain. If it falls apart rather than slicing, just go after it with a fork until it's in bite-sized chunks and shreds.
To serve: get a dish. Put some crispy, salty little potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Lay slices of pot roast over the potatoes. Ladle sauce over the lot.
Eat quickly, before the potatoes get soggy.
Find some bread to mop up the extra sauce with.
Plan for sandwiches for the next day.
Enjoy the snow.
Not a proper recipe, but:
Enough for two people with generous leftovers. (We'll have pot roast sandwiches tomorrow.)
Slice up some onion, about half a good-sized yellow one. Wilt it in a bit of oil over high heat, alongside about a tablespoon of tomato paste, stirring frequently. Add a glug of red wine (1/4 to 1/3 cup?) and reduce until the red wine has the consistency of a syrup. Add a cup of orange juice, a sprig of rosemary, a bit of salt and pepper. Simmer until thickened. Set aside.
(As always, this is infinitely variable. Substitute a liquid you like better, substitute an herb you like better, swap out the onion, add vegetables... you know, whatever.)
Defrost a chunk of pot roastable beef. (We used about two pounds, which, again, is more than a meal for the two of us, but is about perfect if you like leftovers.) Salt on all sides. (I actually quartered it lengthwise to increase surface area, for the salting and the browning and the cooking in sauce.) Get a good heavy pan (I use a cast iron skillet), put some oil in the bottom, and heat over high heat until it spits when you flick water in it.
Sear the meat on all sides until well browned. Remove from the pan. Quickly deglaze the pan with another quarter cup of wine, then pour the wine-and-meat-juices into the onion-and-orange-juice sauce.
Cook according to your favorite pot roast method. Now that I have a sous vide, I vacuum seal the meat and sauce together, and cook at 175F for at least 4 hours, or ideally more.* Before I had a sous vide, I would dump the meat and sauce into an oven-save vessel (cast iron dutch oven is nice), cover loosely, and bake at 250F for 3-4 hours, topping up with liquid if it looked too dry.
* - The sous vide sites recommend at least 12 hours, but I rarely think about things that far in advance, and I will tell you: four to six hours makes a perfectly lovely pot roast.
About half an hour before dinnertime, wash half a pound or so of bitty potatoes. (I used some bitty fingerling potatoes so small they were bite-sized with no cutting at all.) Toss with oil and salt, roll out on a baking sheet, and bake at 350F for half an hour. (If you still have the meat in the oven, don't worry, turning up the heat for the last half-hour won't hurt it. Just make sure it doesn't boil dry or anything.)
When the meat is done, fish it out of the liquid (don't throw out the liquid! it is delicious!), let it rest about 10 minutes just to let it firm up a bit, then slice thinly against the grain. If it falls apart rather than slicing, just go after it with a fork until it's in bite-sized chunks and shreds.
To serve: get a dish. Put some crispy, salty little potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Lay slices of pot roast over the potatoes. Ladle sauce over the lot.
Eat quickly, before the potatoes get soggy.
Find some bread to mop up the extra sauce with.
Plan for sandwiches for the next day.
Enjoy the snow.