3-Day Pot Roast Recipe

Yes, I did just spend three days making a pot roast. AND IT WAS WORTH IT!

Writing it down so I don't forget:

( Ingredients, in order of use )

DAY 1: SIMMER SAUCE
STEP 1: Cut into chunks
turnip
carrot
parsley
cut garlic cloves in half

STEP 2: Put in pot and simmer until the level has gone down by an inch and veg are tender
All the above, plus:
1 qt beef stock
handful parsley and/or dill and/or thyme
1/3 bottle red wine

STEP 3: Scoop out vegetables, strain stock. Day 1 is done

DAY 2: ROASTING
STEP 1: Dust roast with flour on all sides and sear (put leftover flour in fridge; you can use it on Day 3 for the thickening)

STEP 2: Deglaze pan with 1/4 inch merlot and all of yesterday's stock, let simmer a minute

STEP 3: As the sauce simmers, add 1/2 to 1 cup strained tomato (to your taste; less if you like beefy broth, more if you like tomato). Stir well to combine

STEP 3: Layer ingredients in this order in the pot, letting sauce flow around it:
A - 2 or 3 sprigs rosemary (or pat 1/8 cup crushed dried rosemary on bottom of roast)
B - Roast
C - 2 or 3 more sprigs rosemary (or pat rest of crushed dried rosemary on top of roast)
D - Lots of fresh chopped mixed mushrooms - portobello, button, shitake

STEP 4: Cover pot. Roast at 225 F (~107 C, according to Google) for about 5 hours.

STEP 5: Let cool an hour or so, put in refrigerator. IT IS NOT READY TO EAT YET!

DAY 3: THICKEN SAUCE
STEP 1: Take out of refrigerator. Scrape off and discard layer of fat that has risen to the surface.

STEP 2: Remove the beef and mushrooms gently; don't worry about getting every little bit; you'll catch them in the next step.

STEP 3: Strain the sauce. Mushrooms and beef bits can be rescued here. The sauce will be a bit chunky; stir it in the strainer to get all the juice out.

STEP 4: Beef and mushrooms back into pot.

STEP 5: Make a roux by heating 3 tablespoons of oil to smoking or butter to foaming and dusting in 3 tablespoons of the reserved flour. It's being cooked, so it won't poison anyone. When the roux has thickened, stir in the strained sauce and bring it to a boil. If it's not as thick as you'd like, you can gently shake in a teaspoon of the reserved flour. Throw any leftover flour away now. NOTE: roux can be made with any fat, if you don't want butter)

STEP 5: When the sauce is as thick as you want, pour it back over the meat and mushrooms. Put back in oven at at warm -- it was between 150/200 F -- until hot through.

Eat.


Alternatively, you could cool the sauce back down, tear up the meat, and freeze at this point. Pot roast freezes nicely. Also, a frozen individual pot roast will thaw to edible in the oven at the same time that an individual apple crisp will cook...

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Sunday Wrapup

This week has been an exercise in "don't plan." I've got nothing to report about doing episodes of The Walk, days I've picked up items, etc.

I need to learn to deal with reality intrusions without feeling that I've somehow deliberately blown off my chores.

On the other hand, I've started slicing my sprints into 3 goals: the top priority for the sprint (red), the longer-term medium priority job (orange), and the "this week I must" small task (blue), and despite snow, cable outages, and other kerfluffles, I have accomplished all of them.

1) RED: finish and deliver essay. Done 2 days ahead of deadline due to snow day.

2) ORANGE: resume redo. I'd renewed an excellent book twice from the library and just gave up and ordered my own copy. This one I'm rereading with a highlighter and post-it tabs.

3) BLUE: I'm holding to the sprint idea but the plan of tracking it along the side of my refrigerator, not so much. So I created Day Timer pages for each task, listing definition of done, materials needed, sub tasks, etc. and put it in my calendar. I also write weekly "to dos" to myself and at the top of the page are now red, orange, and blue highlighter stripes so I know what most to focus on.

I also added a list for very short-term jobs, the kind of thing that would only take a couple of hours to do with materials on hand, so that the next time reality intrudes, I'll have something that I can cross off a list and feel better about.

And speaking of feeling better, on a different-colored page in among the sprint pages is the You Done Good page, where I write down what innovation or chore I've done to be proud of. I didn't do that last year and that was a HUGE mistake!

And finally, speaking of innovations to be proud of, the idea of putting the month's bills in an envelope with what you paid when written on the front has proven to have another excellent benefit -- when my bank statement came in and I was all "What is that massive amount of money I don't remember paying" on it, I could pull the previous month's envelope and go "Oh. That's what that was" just by looking at the list of numbers. Such a simple little thing - a wire file basket with letter-sized envelopes with notes on the front, but it's proving to have so many benefits!