Pot Roast - Pure Comfort Food

Posted by Big Dog at 4/26/2009 10:42 AM
Categories: Wine, Recipes

Pot Roast - Pure Comfort Food
 
It's a cold spring day, the rain is not letting up and the forecast is the same for the rest of the week. My spouse has been out of the country for two weeks and I am about as bummed as I can get. What is called for is some pure and simple comfort food. Now being of Scottish and Irish decent, I can not explain to you the food of my ancestors. A hunk of meat was a great score, it was never prime rib or a tenderloin, it was something a little less expensive. As you can guess these cuts were a littler tougher then most and had to be cooked to tenderness, not the low and slow BBQ method but they would roast the frack out of it. This method of cooking would generally dry out the meat beyond all recognition (perhaps that was the point). To get the flavour back, you would make gravy out the the drippings and reconstitute the meat with it. Gravy made everything better, hell that is why Yorkshire pudding was made, a vessel to hold gravy.

Well then my mom found pot roast, this resolved the dry meat but it was still cooked so well done you could cut it with an fork. I really do not think it was cutting but more releasing it's molecular bond. In either event, once in a while I crave pot roast (I'm so ashamed).

So, being a Black Pigger (that sounds weird) I had to amp it up a bit. Here I present my rendition of my mom's Pot Roast.
   
As you can see, I'm using plain simple ingredients and a cheap eye of the round (on sale for $2.00 lb). Some whole onions, I just happen to have red on hand, yellow cooking onions will do. Some carrots, garlic, three bay leafs, some salt & pepper, basil and oregano, a can of tomato sauce and of course a bottle of red wine.

Today we are using the Carolinian "Horny Toad" blend. It's a cabernet blended with blueberries and a variety of currents, a dry red to complement beef and tomato. Perfect, right on target, for what I have in mind. Before you all start tittering like a school girl, I did not name this stuff, it was named long before I got around. If I had anything to do with naming it with would have been "Horny Dog".

Enough digressing...

Place everything into the slow cooker and simmer for 8 hours, remember I said simple.

Now sometimes at the end of the day, I take the meat out, turn it up to high and throw in some green beans or a 1/2 cup of barley. Today I chose to cook a nice deep roux for about three hours. The kids thought I was nuts, however the complex flavours you get from this can not be obtained from any short cut. After the roast has had a few minutes to rest, cut it into thin slices and serve it with the whole onions and the little carrots that I fished out of the cooker. 

This is the stuff  that I grew up on, but only better. You will get the subtle flavour of the fruit wine and the perfect balance of spices.

However, I wasn't done with my obsession for comfort food. I needed to take this at least one more step. I would never be able to face my ancestors without a good old fashion starch. What else but a big messy helping of lumpy mashed potatoes with salt and butter. While I just blew my Atkins diet, who the frack cares when it comes to comfort food. My idea of comfort food usually includes a healthy load of carbs like Mac n' Cheese with 5,000 calories per serving. Today it's "POT ROAST" with all the trimmings and a good slop of gravy


All I have to say is YUM... Now don't scrimp on 1/2 a roast, this is just dynamite sliced thin on a sandwich the next day, with some horseradish and some sauerkraut...


Cheers from the Big Dog


 

   
         
 

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