Pot Roast Feast & Holiday Magic

My favorite part about this time of year is all the food and drink, the cooking, and of course all the family and friends. I had started this holiday season being pretty “good”, as in I had been regularly going to the gym, watching what I ate, and I hadn’t been drinking. But somewhere between Thanksgiving and my birthday I said, “it’s the holidays do whatever you want”, and it’s ben a steady decline into bodily disarray ever since. I’m exaggerating, but I’m sure at least some of you can relate to the gluttony we find ourselves indulging in this time of year. I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed it, I’ve enjoyed every minute this season from spending Thanksgiving with my siblings and nieces and mom, to my birthday at a French restaurant and the whole place singing happy birthday to me with sparklers going off, and now on Christmas spent with Joel and his family, and all the friends and little bits of holiday cheer in between. I’m feeling grateful for it all. And there’s still the New Year to come!

A few days ago we hosted two of our friends, D & V, as a pre-Christmas dinner. The weather leading up to Christmas has been characteristically winterish, frigid below zero temperatures, ice, and snow. The day we decided to host the city had basically come to a standstill but our friends braved the weather and the roads, and I think they’d agree it was worth it.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and cheers to the New Year ahead.

Pot Roast with Carrots and Potatoes (serves 4 - 6)

Ingredients:
(1) 3.5- 4 pound chuck roast
1/2 cup flour
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
5 garlic cloves, peeled
3 cups water + 3 teaspoons better than bullion (roasted beef base)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon of each: dried thyme, dried oregano, dried basil, pepper
1 bayleaf
a few sprigs of fresh thyme, rosemary, parsley, sage
2 -3 pounds Carrots (or as many as you’d like and that fit around the roast)
6 large Yukon gold potatoes, peeled, quartered, and scored with a fork
2 shallots, sliced
1 teaspoon salt

Gravy

Ingredients:
The following ingredients, except for the flour, will accumulate from the roasting process.
2 tablespoons roast drippings
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups roast stock

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Throughly dry the roast with paper towels. Place flour on a plate and coat the entire roast. Shake off any excess flour, you should have remaining just a light coating. Heat vegetable oil in a pan over high heat. Using tongs, lightly brown the top, bottom, and sides of the roast. Place roast on either a baking sheet with a wire rack (large enough for three cups of water), or a shallow roasting dish also with a rack so that your roast isn’t swimming in liquid. Place the whole garlic cloves into the crevices between the fat and the meat.

3. Remove the oil from the pan. Using a half cup of water, deglaze the pan making sure to get all of the brown bits at the bottom. Pour the deglazed water into your measuring cup and add enough hot water to get three cups. Beat in the bullion (it dissolves better the hotter that water is) and then mix in the Worcestershire sauce and dried herbs, set aside. Using kitchen twine, tie together the herbs and place on top of the roast.

4. Around the roast, place as many carrots as you’d like as well as the potatoes and sliced shallots (it’s okay if there is some overlapping) Pour the prepared liquid all over the roast and sprinkle on the salt all over. Cover tightly with aluminum foil.

5. Roast at 425 degree F for 30 minutes in the lower middle third rack of the oven (like two notches up from the bottom). Carefully remove roast from oven, turn over, then re-foil. Lower the temperature to 300 degrees F. Add roast back to oven and cook an additional 4 hours at 300 degrees.

6. When finished, remove from the oven and move the roast and vegetables to a serving platter, cover with the foil, and let everything rest for 25 - 30 minutes. Everything will be soft and tender at this point.

7. For the gravy, remove all the remaining juices from the roasting dish to a bowl (it’ll be around 2 cups of liquid).* Using a spoon, skim off as much fat as you possibly can into another bowl and set aside. In a sauce pan set over medium heat, add two tablespoons of the skimmed roast fat and whisk in two tablespoons of flour. Whisk for about two minutes to cook the flour, you’ll start to see the beef drippings and flour bubble (this is your “roux” for the gravy). Immediately pour in the two cups of roasting liquid, whisk vigorously, and be sure to scrape all sides of the pan to get any sticking flour. Whisk until the gravy thickens to the right consistency, beating in up to an additional teaspoon of flour to reach desired thickness.

8. Pour some of the gravy over the roast and vegetables, and serve remaining gravyin a dish alongside the roast.

Green Beans

Ingredients:
3 pounds green beans
4 tablespoons beef drippings
salt and pepper

Instructions:
1. Bring to the boil a large pot of lightly salted water. Blanch green beans for 10 minutes. Drain and run under cold water. Set aside.

2. When ready, heat the beef fat over medium high heat. Add the green beans and season to taste with salt, toss. When the green beans are heated through, season to taste with pepper, toss, and remove from heat to a serving dish. Serve alongside the roast.


*Notes: If you have less than 2 cups of roast stock, simply add enough water until you get two cups and add 1 teaspoon of Better than Bullion Roast Beef Base per cup of water added.