Ultimate Slow-Cooker Pot Roast
Every week, Food52's Senior Editor Kristen Miglore unearths recipes that are nothing short of genius.
Today: A feel-good pot roast made in the slow cooker.
Last month, I got an email from my mom titled “Thinking of you” — it was a picture of the inside of her slow-cooker.
"There’s a lovely pot roast under there perfectly seared like a giant chicken fried steak," she wrote.
She must have been remembering my pot roast phase, or protracted slump, after I graduated from college. I’d just started a job I hated (analyzing car lease portfolios, if you must know) and I was weathering a breakup badly. The only thing I liked doing was planning what I would cook for dinner.
But I wasn’t in possession of anything as nice as a Crock-Pot, and certainly there was no Le Creuset braiser on the shelf next to my roommate’s George Foreman Grill. My specialty was zucchini tacos with blue cheese.
So what I longed for was pot roast — in a loud, primal aching for comfort food — and it’s what I asked for when I went home to the people who could feed me better.
I suspect that my mom turns to pot roast for the same reasons, and maybe we all do. When life isn’t great, pot roast is there, and it doesn’t ask for much.
All you need is an unruly hunk of beef, stacked in a pot with vegetables (pot roast begs you not to chop them evenly, or at all), and some liquid — water, wine, stock, whatever.
It bubbles along for a few hours, fills the house with happy smells, and at the end you get a pot full of meat that melts and falls to pieces, vegetables that have replaced their water content with meat content, and gravy. It makes its own gravy! The only thing it doesn’t do is rub your back.
More: How You’re Not Using the Best Part of a Sunday Roast
The recipe my mom uses follows this pared-down formula (plus four variations — I have not included the one that calls for canned fruit syrup), but adds one more cathartic step: you beat flour, salt, and pepper into the meat with the side of a plate. I’m not sure why. It seems to create a thicker crust (adding to that crisp chicken fried steak factor), and a more lustrous gravy in the end.
The recipe comes from an extraordinary woman named , a wartime journalist for CBS who found herself jobless after the war and had to turn to writing cookbooks.
The recipe comes from an extraordinary woman named Betty Wason, a wartime journalist for CBS who found herself jobless after the war and had to turn to writing cookbooks.
My mom has adapted Wason’s recipe for the slow-cooker — something that Betty Wason didn’t have in 1963 when her recipe was published in House & Garden magazine, but surely would have approved. By removing it from the realm of the stove and oven, you’re that much freer to have pot roast at any time of year, whenever you need it.
Adapted slightly from House & Garden magazine (January, 1963) via Epicurious
Serves 6 to 8
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
5 pounds rump of beef (or other roast suitable for slow-cooking, such as chuck)
2 to 3 tablespoons fat or oil
2 onions, sliced, or 10 to 12 small onions, peeled
1 to 2 carrots, scraped and cubed
Herbs and seasonings, as desired (we used bay leaf and thyme)
1 cup liquid (wine, bouillon, tomatoes, vegetable broth, etc.)
Other vegetables, as desired (we used baby red potatoes)
1. Season the flour with the salt and pepper and pound the mixture into the meat with the edge of a plate.
2. Brown meat on all sides in the hot fat or oil. Add the onions, cover and cook over low heat 10 minutes. Add the carrots, herbs, seasonings and liquid. Cover tightly and simmer 3 1/2 - 5 hours, until meat is fork tender. Add desired vegetables during the last 20 or 30 minutes.
3. Slow-cooker variation: After browning the meat, transfer to a slow cooker. Pour off excess fat from the pan. Saute onions in the same pan until softened slightly, then add to the slow-cooker. Pour liquid into the pan, scraping up the browned bits. Pour liquid and loosened bits into the slow-cooker, and add carrots and herbs. Cook on low 8 hours or more, adding desired vegetables during the last 20 or 30 minutes.
Save and print the full recipe at Food52.
Photos by James Ransom
This article originally appeared on Food52.com: Betty Wason’s Pot Roast (+ Slow-Cooker Variation from My Mother)