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Given the propensity I and certain other users have to derail threads so we can talk food, I though I'd set up a thread for just talking about food.
So here goes:
Beef Chuck Roast
Every weekend I try to do a nice sit down dinner, so this weekend I decided to do a beef roast. The roast I got was a nice bone in 2-2.5 lb. beef chuck roast from Bluescreek Farms (at the north market).
The chuck roast is a shoulder cut and therefore has a lot of connective tissue and can get get very tough if cooked improperly. I decided to go with a modified braze (cooking in liquid at low heat) so that I could use a longer and slower cooking time to break down the connective tissue and make a nice fork tender roast.
In a braze, the idea is to brown the meat on the outside at a high heat to give a nice color and flavour to the meat and then reduce the heat and cook for a long time in liquid at a low temperature (generally in a braze this means below 200F). It's common to use a dutch oven or a crock pot to do the job, but if you use the crock pot, keep in mind you will need to brown in a different pan.
The modified part comes from the fact that as much as I'd love to cook this for 12 hours, I hate to get up before noon on Sunday.. this means that I turn the heat up from the to 275-300F to finish after cooking for 4-6 hours so i can get this on the table before midnight :-)
For the liquid I used chicken stock and vermouth, but water and a table red would work just as well.. The stock tends to add body that water doesn't bring, but this dosen't matter much as you will be cooking down collagen from the connective tissue into the liquid anyway. I don't really care for prepackaged broths much, but I suppose you can use this as well. Season the liquid to taste. I tend to like just salt and pepper. Try to have enough liquid to reach the top of the meat.
I selected a cast iron dutch oven, oiled it with grapeseed oil (canola or any other heat resistant oil would be fine) and got it hot enough for water to dance in the pan and put my roast in. I cooked both sides of the roast to get a nice brown.
I turned down the heat and placed a little bit of olive oil (out of butter), and sauted 3 large thinly sliced shallots (1 large onion can work) till just before clear. I then added about 1/4 cup of vermouth and a 1/4 cup of chicken stock to the pan. I used this liquid to scrape the drippings up from the bottom of the pan and cook the shallots to clear
I then added the meat back to the pan, and added another 1/3 of vermouth and 2-3 cups of chicken stock.
To the pot I added 6-8 small potatoes and placed in the oven at 200F uncovered. I also added fennel bulb sliced. You can add whatever veg you want, keeping in mind that root veggies do well with this kind of heat. Carrot and parsnips would be good. Also beets could be a good addition.
I cooked like this for an hour and turned the meat over and cooked for another hour. I then covered the dutch oven and cooked for 2 hours and turned the meat over again. After 4 hours I sliced up some mushrooms and slivered 2 cloves of garlic and placed them in the liquid and cooked for another 30 minutes. Now is a good time to check the seasoning.
At this point I turned up the heat to 275F. Now if you have time, you can cook this all night and just use say.. 180F. You should end up with an amazingly tender roast and not have to do much work. Crock pots are also good for this type of cooking, but I've never used them much.. My dad was excellent at this though and we had some pretty good slow cooked meat this way. My problem with crock pots is that you can't control the temp.
When the meat is done, it should fall off the bone and you should be able to cut it with a fork. Pull from the oven and let the meat cool in it's own liquid. Roasts generally taste better served warm (but not hot). I like to place on a large plate or platter and then decant the liquid in a gravy boat or tureen. Skim any oil on the top and discard.
My only problem with the way I did this is that next time i would add the potatoes later in the cooking process.
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