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I was hosting a holiday party for my horseback riding club last weekend, and I needed a recipe that would be a crowd-pleaser but still relatively easy to make. Braising is one of my favorite cooking methods, so a pot roast was perfect. I was cooking for 20 or so people, so my go-to of short ribs would have been a little pricey for this experience. I ended up doing two chuck roasts of about 3.5 lbs each (but the recipe below is just for one roast). You’ll definitely need more than 7 lbs of beef for a sit-down dinner of 20 people, but this was a potluck, so it was just enough.
I was researching various pot roast recipes for seasoning inspiration. The classic pot roast recipe at the Beach House Kitchen uses Montreal steak seasoning. I thought that would be really tasty, so that’s what I used to season the roast. Montreal steak seasoning isn’t something I keep on hand, so I used the recipe from Culinary Hill to make it.
Because I was making two roasts, I was going to try to do one in the dutch oven and one in the slow cooker. The slow cooker was a mistake. I ended up transferring it to my Le Creuset braiser about an hour into cooking when I compared the slow cooker version with the one in the dutch oven. The amount of red wine in this recipe doesn’t make it a good slow cooker recipe.
Red Wine Pot Roast
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3½ lb chuck roast
- ⅓ cup Montreal steak seasoning
- 1 onion cut into large chunks
- 2 cloves garlic grated
- 1½ cups red wine
- 1½ cups beef stock (more if needed)
- 3 sprigs rosemary
- 4 carrots
- 1½ lbs potatoes
- Olive oil
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tbsp cold water
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°. Preheat dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat.
- Liberally season one side of the beef with Montreal steak seasoning.
- Drizzle enough olive oil in the pan to coat the bottom.
- Add onions and garlic to the pan. Saute, stirring frequently, until onions get soft and begin to caramelize.
- Remove onions and garlic from the pan and set aside. (It’s OK if you have a couple of stragglers that are hard to get and stay in the pan.)
- Place the beef in the pan, seasoning side up, and brown for about 4 minutes. Flip the beef and cook for another 4 minutes.
- Remove the beef from the pan and set aside.
- Pour the wine into the pan to deglaze. Use a wooden spoon to scrape all of the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
- Turn off the heat on the stovetop. Place the beef back into the pan. Add the onions, garlic, and rosemary.
- Add beef stock to the pan until the beef is covered by half. Transfer the dutch oven to the oven and cover with the lid.
- While the roast is cooking, cut the potatoes into small chunks and set aside in a bowl of water. Slice carrots into large pieces and add to the bowl with the potatoes. Transfer to the refrigerator.
- Cook the pot roast in the oven for 2 hours.
- Drain the water from the potatoes and carrots. Remove the pot roast from the oven and carefully add potatoes and carrots to the pot.
- Return to the oven and cook, covered, for another hour (or longer if needed) until the beef is tender and begins to fall apart easily.
- Remove the beef, carrots, and potatoes from the dutch oven and set aside. (I used a slotted spoon to remove the potatoes and carrots). Remove rosemary stems as you find them.
- Use an immersion (stick) blender to puree the onions in the pan juices.
- Place dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat.
- Combine 1 tbsp cornstarch with 2 tbsp very cold water.
- Stream the cornstarch mixture into the pan juices, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to low and cook for a few minutes until it thickens into a gravy.
- Pull the beef apart and serve with the potatoes, carrots, and gravy.
