Man! What a Pot Roast!

Jeff the Chef
"Man! What a Pot Roast!" from Make It Like a Man!

So much meat, you’ll be delirious. So delicious, you’ll be deeply satisfied. Although it has Italian ingredients, it doesn’t scream “Italiano!” at you. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that!) This pot roast is just incredibly flavorful.

Man! What a Pot Roast!
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Man! What a Pot Roast!

Serves

8

It’s easy to multitask the prep as you go. Once it’s in the oven, you have almost nothing to do – even the cleanup is a breeze – which will leave you nothing to do but enjoy your fantastic roast.

Ingredients

  • 2 (2½ lbs each) chuck roasts

  • 1 Tbs olive oil

  • Salt and pepper

  • ¼ cup flour

  • 12 new potatoes, (peeled and) cut in half

  • 2 white or yellow onions, trimmed, quartered, peeled, and thinly sliced

  • ½ cup double-strength beef stock (see notes)

  • 3 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced

  • 1 can (14 oz.) small-dice tomatoes

  • 2 generous Tbs Italian seasoning

  • 8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced

  • 1½ lbs fresh green beans, trimmed

Directions

  • Pat the roasts dry with paper towels; be thorough. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Generously salt and moderately pepper the first roast and place it in a skillet over moderately-high heat, browning it on both sides, about 4 minutes per side. Lay it into the insert of a 7-quart slow-cooker. Repeat this procedure with the second roast, snuggling them both onto the bottom of the insert, rather than layering them.
  • Sprinkle the flour over the roasts. (Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of salt over the flour, optionally.) Distribute the potatoes over the roast, around the edges of the pot, creating a well in the center.
  • Pre-heat the oven to 325°F.
  • Place the onions in the same (unwashed) skillet you used for the roasts, and cook over medium heat until lightly browned. (See notes.) Add the stock and garlic and boil for 1 minute. Stir in the tomatoes and Italian seasoning until well blended. Pour this mixture into the well inside the ring of potatoes. Distribute the mushrooms over all.
  • Cover the insert, and place it in the oven until the meat is fork tender, 4½ hours. Toward the end of cooking, add the green beans, distributing them over the top of the mixture.
  • Allow the insert to rest on a cooling rack, covered, for 30 minutes before serving. To serve, remove the beans, potatoes, and meat to a large serving platter, and pour the remaining contents of the pan over the top. If you decide to serve directly from the pot, make sure to have not only tongs that will let you grab up the meat and veggies, but a ladle that will help you with the sauce.

Notes

  • Double-strength stock: if you’re using a liquid (non-concentrated) stock, boil a full cup of it down to ½ cup. If you’re using a reduction, use double what you should for ½ cup of water. Substitute dry red wine or a strong-flavored beer for the stock. In a pinch, chicken stock will do.
  • It shouldn’t be necessary – because they should come fully trimmed – but if your roasts have any large pieces of fat or connective tissue around the edges, remove them.
  • Check your manufacturer’s specifications about using your slow-cooker insert in the oven. My All-Clad insert is safe up to 400°F in the oven. An extraordinarily large casserole pot could substitute for the slow-cooker insert.
  • The optional salt depends on a few things. Not to mention your tastes in seasoning, it depends on how much salt you used on the roasts, and how salty your stock is. Although you can adjust the seasoning after the fact, it’s much easier add salt at the outset.
  • You can be as fuzzy as you like about the type of potato to use, and how many to include. I love Yukon gold in this recipe as much as red. Fingerlings are another good choice. I prefer to leave them unpeeled. It’s important to get them all to be approximately the same size; accordingly, some may need to be halved, while other need quartering, and some very small ones might be left whole (even if exposed flesh is preferable).
  • Browning the onions: at first, the onions will deglaze the pan, which will turn them brown, even though they’re nowhere near “browned” yet. In time, the onions will develop a fond of their own; that’s when they’re done. It can take anywhere from six to fifteen minutes to get them to this point.
  • If you don’t have fresh garlic on-hand, 1 tsp of garlic powder will do the trick.
  • You can use any type of canned tomato, so long as you avoid anything that is essentially a sauce, like crushed tomatoes. Small-dice tomatoes will more-or-less disintegrate into the dish. Whole, stewed tomatoes will leave you with small shreds of tomato.
  • If you don’t want to buy a pre-made Italian seasoning blend, use a combination of equal parts basil, oregano, and thyme. Or vary the proportions to your liking. Some people include other spices – such as marjoram and sage – in a blend like this.
  • I like to leave the green beans simply trimmed, but I could also imagine slicing them into bite-sized pieces. If you like them al dente, add them during the last 15 minutes of cooking. If you like them a bit more on the cooked size, add them in the last half-hour.
"Man! What a Pot Roast!" from Make It Like a Man!

The Backstory

I’ve made this dish many times in a slow cooker. Eight hours on “high” does the trick, with no adjustments needed in the ingredients. You’ll produce more sauce this way – so much so that you’ll have a lot of it leftover. But this is just a new, delicious dish waiting to be born: make meatballs, boil some egg noodles, and toss it all in the leftover sauce.

I’ve also made this dish using only one roast. With one roast, your cooking oven time will diminish. (With a slow cooker, it’ll stay the same, but you’ll cook it on “low.”) With one roast, you can serve four with no leftover meat. You’ll have a higher – and by many people’s estimations, healthier – proportion of veggies to meat. My feeling, however, is that pot roast – which for me is a once or twice a year happening at most – should be a celebration of meat, and that there should definitely be leftovers!

I love how a slow cooker doesn’t need to be watched over, how it doesn’t heat up the kitchen, and how moist it leaves the meat in this dish. On top of that, using a slow cooker method with this dish will give you a lovely result. I do recommend it. I decided to use an oven only because I happened one day to have this entire dish assembled in the slow cooker, and when I went to turn it on, the control mechanism fried. Turns out, the oven method is actually superior. You get bits of caramelization in the potatoes that are above the liquid. The sauce winds up thicker, which concentrates the flavors.

Social Learning

Fork Tender

This roasts cooks slowly, so you have plenty of opportunity to check it for doneness – the point at which is has become fork tender.

  • If you can stick a fork into one of the roasts, and lift it right out of the pan, it isn’t anywhere near tender.
  • If you can use a fork to break off a piece of the roast, but you feel that if you were doing so on a dinner plate in front of other people, who’d wish you had a knife, the roast isn’t tender enough.
  • Once it is fork tender, you will be unable to use tongs to lift the roast even two inches off the bottom of the pan without it falling apart.
  • As you effortlessly pull off a few pieces with a fork, there should not be any obvious pieces of fat or connective tissue; all of that should have gelatinized into the sauce.
The resting period isn’t optional.

The capacity of the meat to hold liquid increases as it cools. It will reabsorb some of the liquid it lost during cooking.

I don’t recommend making it in advance.

This pot roast is pretty good the next day, but it’s not as gloriously guest-worthy as it was the day before. Once the roast has completed its post-oven resting period, you can place the insert into the slow cooker and hold it on the “warm” setting if you need to, or you can place it in a 150°F oven. This will gradually dry out the roast, so I wouldn’t recommend holding it this way for more than a half-hour. If you do have to reheat it, remove the solids from the sauce, bring the sauce to a boil, return the solids, and keep the whole thing below the simmer point until the meat comes to temperature.

Leftovers can be reheated in the same manner, and should be stored, if possible, in a way that minimizes their exposure to oxygen. If you’re planning to make sandwiches out of the leftover pot roast, store the meat, potatoes and beans, mushrooms, and sauce separately. (If will be exceedingly difficult to separate them once they’re refrigerated.)

"Man! What a Pot Roast!" from Make It Like a Man!
Man! What a Pot Roast!

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man!, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you, Kesor. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. 

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51 thoughts on “Man! What a Pot Roast!”

    • Thank you so much, Simona! I have to confess that the potatoes are my favorite part about pot roast. Well, at least I think so. I do love the roast, too…

      Reply

  3. You just took the words right out of my mouth – Man, what a pot roast! Actually, it should be more like, “Man, what nice roasts you have!” I love everything about this recipe, Jeff. And the extra leftovers? That’s definitely a requirement for pot roast. This just screams winter meal to me!
    David @ Spiced recently posted…French Dip Stuffed Garlic Bread

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    • Yes, I agree with you, David: definitely a nice winter meal. Hybernation-worthy.

      Reply

    • Well, you could easily cut it down. Or just enjoy a lot of leftovers! It’s amazing how quickly this gets eaten up at my house.

      Reply

  5. Sadly we don´t have a slow cooker, but, man, this DOES look yummy!
    Hubby once made a roast in the oven for ages till it fell apart – must ask him to do that again, thank you for the reminder!
    🙂 Great tip with the fork, funnily written.
    Hmmmm, I want!
    Iris Flavia recently posted…Snow In January????

    Reply

  7. Who doesn’t like a pot roast during the winter.. right? Compliments to a fabulous recipe for this roast, Jeff! even your potatoes are cooked perfectly. And enjoyed the back story. This is comfort food at its best!!

    Reply

  8. My mother made pot roast very much like that, but she used a pressure cooker, which kind of ruined the potatoes. Doing it in a slow cooker looks more flavor-enhancing. Like a lot of people, my cooking and meal plans have been much changed by the lockdown, as we never have guests.

    be safe… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
    mae recently posted…The Nightmare is OVER

    Reply

  9. Jeff,
    Pot roast dinners and winters go hand in hand. Yours look so. Perfectly cooked and loved the idea of using a slow cooker. Loved the potatoes in the roast and it makes it genuinely filling and all flavoursome.

    Reply

  10. Well, that does sound amazing, Jeff. I haven’t had a decent pot roast in ages. Love your advice on reducing the stock or using double strength concentrate. Such a perfect meal for our (finally) cool weather in Arizona.

    Reply

  13. I’ve never been a huge fan of pot roasts (I know, weird) but this one looks out of this world. I bet the house smells great too. I’ve never thought about using my slow cooker dish in the oven, will need to see if I can. I always thought one that can go on the stove would be great so you can do all the searing in one pot.
    Eva Taylor recently posted…Chotto Matte Dinner Kit

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  14. I’ve been craving something like this. But as a confession, I’ve never used a slow-cooker (nor do I have one). So it’s hard for me to imagine what the insert looks like. I do have a 14-inch cast-iron Dutch oven (from our camping days) and I appreciate the “extra-large casserole” note. GREG

    Reply

    • The only critical part is that you get the meat to lay on the bottom of the pan, so that it remains submerged in liquid as it cooks. You could even cut the second roast into pieces to get it to fit. Or you could just use a single roast. I would probably not have written the recipe for an insert, except that when my slow cooker fritzed, I decided to use the insert in the oven since all the ingredients were already layered into it, and I was so pleased to find that an insert can be used in the oven. And the roast came out so nicely.

      Reply

  15. Wow! This looks and sounds over the top dreamy. Comforting and so flavorful. I’m in! I’d be tempted to make a ton a once, so I appreciate the tip on it being best day one. 🙂 ~Valentina

    Reply

  16. Why am I possibly the only person in the USA who doesn’t love pot roast? I made one a couple of years ago, a Rachael ray recipe. My husband liked it, so it just must be me. I never liked brisket until i got a sous vide, maybe I should sous vide a pot roast?!! I will use your recipe the next time I make a pot roast, like in two years. Maybe sooner.
    Chef Mimi recently posted…Colcannon with Crispy Leeks

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    • I totally get you, Mimi. I’m sure we all have our “pot roasts.” Mine is lobster. I don’t dislike it, I just don’t see what the fuss is all about. I’m much more exicted about the clarified butter its dipped in. Weirdly, I can’t get enough shrimp! Go figure.

      Reply

  18. Oh man! That looks delicious. We’re in the deep freeze in our part of the country now so comfort food is what we’re craving. Love the beef stock reduction in this recipe!

    Reply

  19. Oooh, it’s definitely Pot Roast Season here! This looks so moist and tasty, I love those spices, too! I usually cook a pot roast in the slow-cooker or the Instant Pot, but I have to say, i like the flavors better when it’s from the oven! I think it’s because there’s more different textures going on. who knows? Anyway, it’s quite a roast!
    Laura recently posted…Roasted Sunchokes with Basil and Mint

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    • Well, I haven’t gotten my slow cooker fixed yet, but a neighbor recently gifted me a 6-quart Instant Pot. This recipe wouldn’t fit into it, not with both roasts, I don’t think. But on these cold winter days – I think it’s 11 degrees F here this morning – I don’t mind having the oven on for a while!

      Reply

  25. This roasted pot looks so delicious and amazing. This is so wonderful mouthwatering recipe for me, thank you for sharing it.

    Reply

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