Closet Cooking Pot Roast

Kevin over at Closet Cooking recently had a posting for pot roast - and the pictures had everyone droooooling. While I don't consider myself a big roast fan (I always seem to end up with a tough dried out hunk of gray meat - blech), I decided I had to give this a try! Kevin's recipes are always winners, and his explanations are great - I couldn't lose.

Another problem I have with making many beef dishes is getting the right kind of beef. It seems like it's always hard to find something labeled just like the recipe. Kevin's recipe called for a 3-5 lb "chuck roast" - so it doesn't look like I did too bad here:


Time to chop up some onions and garlic!


And here we have a grainy mustard, tomato paste (I keep it patted out REAL thin in a ziplock baggie in the freezer - easy to break off what I need), salt and pepper, bay leaves (from my little bay tree in the kitchen window), and thyme (dried down in the basement - I need to remember to do more of that this next summer!)


Add to that the wine and the beef broth...


Brown up the roast - and WOW did it smell good at this stage!


And then, once everything's cooked for quite awhile, you add carrots and potatoes and let it cook a bit longer.


Because I had to start the roast earlier, and then we were working on projects, the roast cooked a bit longer than it probably should've - closer to the end of the "3-5 hrs" recommended in the recipe...but as you can see here, it was fall apart tender! MMM!


And the veggies were nice and tender too! The carrots turned out great - nice and sweet!


And since I was making a roast, this was the PERFECT occasion to use a gift my parents got me for Christmas - a popover pan!! YUUUUUMMO!


Seriously - how good do these guys look? I have to admit I probably ate half of one just testing to "make sure they're ok", before I even got my plate of food together.


Once the popovers came out of the oven, had a small hole poked in the top to let their steam out, and then let them sit for five minutes, it was time to plate up and eat. Yum - this was a SERIOUSLY good dinner!!!


And some of the leftover roast was great in another recipe inspired by Kevin's blog!