Chuck Roasts are on sale this week. Love Pot Roast, especially as left overs or sandwiches or beside potatoes, or, well, you know, as pot roast.

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I researched this one. Truth be told, I usually leave the roasts to Greg.
He’s my Sunday dinner man – that’s when he puts his extensive cooking show watching skills to use
and will make us fabulous dinners using all sorts of techniques and tricks.
He’s done BBQ roasts, regular roasts, rotisserie roasts, you name it, he’s tried it.

But, aside from some plain Jane roasts I’ve cooked for croquettes, I haven’t cooked a roast for dinner.

Seasoning the roast

I started by seasoning the roast first.
There are all sorts of pre-mixes available at Schinkels’ for this.
He’s got so many varieties, I couldn’t choose.

But, today, I was just in a hurry, and decided to make one up myself rather than
make another trip to the store for one item.
I used my fresh ground sea salt and some ground pepper and just rubbed that in, all around the roast.

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Then, this is the important part – I seared the outside of the roast.
You do this to quickly “harden” the entire outside, that way the
juices stay in the roast longer and help tenderize the meat from the inside out.

So, in order to get the most flavour possible into this dish,
I first sautéd some onions and crushed garlic in butter in a heavy pot.
I have a nice enameled Dutch pot my mother-in-law bought me years ago,
but a Dutch oven or cast iron pot would work just fine.

Yes, butter.

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I’m so tired of “olive oil” stealing the limelight in all the cooking shows lately.
Don’t they know that butter just tastes better? I mean, olive oil is just so… olive oily.
It just adds grease, not flavour.
Butter, on the other hand, adds dimension, creaminess and old-fashioned pizzaz.
And then, it doesn’t just brown whatever it is you are cooking,
it crisps it, and caramelizes it for even more deliciousness.

Yes, butter.

Like I said, I sautéd some onions and crushed garlic in butter.
Then I set that aside and added more butter to what was left in the pan.

Yes, I did. More butter. It’s been proven that butter doesn’t contribute to heart disease, after all.

Once that was sizzling, I dropped (ok, i probably should have set it gently, but it was a heavy roast, so it really did just drop in) the roast into the pan, and let it brown,
turning it every few minutes to get all the sides. That aroma was delicious, let me tell you!

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Setting the roast aside with the onions for a moment, I moved on to saving the drippings.
I decided to use a red wine I had handy for this next part, but you could use some water or beef broth.
All the little bits of butter, fried onions and bits of roast shouldn’t go to
go to waste by burning onto the bottom of my pan during the roasting part of the job.
I poured about a cup of wine into the pan and scraped away all the little bits, using a metal whisk to mix it all up.
Place the roast back into the pan, put the onions on top, and added a bit more beef broth
so that the roast was sitting in about an inch of liquid.

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Covered the whole thing and put in the oven at 275°F for about 3 1/2 hours.
Then I used the thermometer that came with our oven and told it to beep at 190° internal temperature.
That took about another hour, I think.
Not really sure, cause I ended up outside in my garden and one of my people pulled it out when it was beeping for a while.

Important Suggestions

My suggestion – never cook a roast in the oven if you want to have supper at a specific time.
Every roast will be different based on weight and shape, so it’s important to use a meat thermometer.
Also – because a chuck roast is very marbled, it needs to be cooked to a
higher temperature than a regular roast as the fats need to be rendered to tenderize the tissues.

I cooked mine last night after supper. When Greg found it on the counter later, he pulled it apart and set it directly in the fridge, in all it’s juices. This afternoon, I just took it out and warmed it back up to hot in a 350°F oven.

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I then spent the better part of my afternoon cleaning out my kitchen cupboards and putting my Bulk Barn groceries away.

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Come closer to supper time, I worked on some sides.
I ended up serving it with my famous fried cabbage and some loaded baked potatoes, and voilà!

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And my cupboards never looked better.

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