Apple Cider Pot Roast | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with Apple Cider Pot Roast. That's right, while it's more commonly used to braise pork, Apple Cider really does make for an incredible beef pot roast. And if I was a pile of mashed potatoes on a plate, especially when the weather turns chilly, this is what I want laying on top of me. And to get started, we're going to take about four pounds of beef chuck roast, which for me are going to be these two two-pound pieces. And we'll go ahead and generously season those on both sides with kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, plus a little bit of cayenne. And we will blend those together and cover both sides. And I know at this point it always looks like a shocking amount of seasoning, but four pounds of beef is a lot of meat. And if you're not using like a teaspoon of salt per pound of meat, it could be under seasoned, or some people would call it bland. So reduce the amount if you want, but that's how much I'm putting. And once that's been applied, and we've picked up as much of the excess on the plate as possible, we will head to the stove, where we're going to sear this over high heat, and a little bit of avocado oil, or some other high heat oil. And as usual, I do not want you to rush this step. Okay, we really do want to try to achieve a nice dark brown crust, which is going to produce a deeper, more meaty flavor, as well as help give our sauce a nice beautiful color. So please take your time. And once both sides have been thoroughly browned, we'll remove that to a plate, and we'll turn off the heat, so the pan doesn't start smoking, before we grab the next set of ingredients, which we'll start with three tablespoons of butter, which we will transfer in, and we'll set our heat back on medium. And once the butter melts, we'll transfer in a diced onion, along with his traveling companion, a nice big pinch of salt, and we will cook that stirring for a few minutes. And what's going to happen is that salt's going to draw moisture out of the onion, which is going to start to deglaze that goodness from the bottom of the pan. And after about three or four minutes or so, your onions will turn translucent, and start to get a little bit golden brown. And once they're looking a little something like this, we will stop and make a space in the center, and we will transfer in our minced garlic, and we will cook that for about 30 seconds or so, just to take off the raw edge. And then once we feel like our garlic is cooked long enough, we'll go ahead and toss in our flour, and we'll cook that stirring for a minute or two. And by the way, I do not want a thick starchy gravy here. I'm going for more of a refined sauce, or something closer to like a classic beef au jus. But if you do want your sauce nice and thick, you could easily double that amount, or even triple it if you want something really thick. But either way, once that flour has cooked for a minute or two, we will transfer in almost all of our cooking liquids, starting with some apple cider vinegar, which is very important to balance the sweetness of the next ingredient, which is the star of the show, our apple cider. And we'll go ahead and whisk that in, and we'll turn our heat up to high, since we want this to come up to a boil. And while we wait, we'll transfer in a couple other things. Like any and all accumulated juices from our reserved beef, which we will follow with a small but important splash of Worcestershire sauce. And then I think with these ingredients, we definitely want a nice big spoon of Dijon mustard for its sharpness, acidity, and other magical powders. Speaking of which, we will finish up with one spoon of poultry seasoning. And if you don't have that, you can toss in a nice big pinch of dried sage, dried thyme, and dried rosemary. And after giving that another nice thorough whisking, we will let this boil for about 10 minutes or so, or until it reduces down and starts getting a little bit thick. And once we get to that point, and our mixture is looking something like this, we will transfer in a couple of cups of chicken broth. And we'll stir that in, and we'll continue to let this boil and reduce, until we get it back to about that same thickness level that we were just at. And yes, if you want to save a step, you could add all the liquids at once, and reduce at once. But the German chef I learned this recipe from insisted that we reduce the cider first, and concentrate that before we add the chicken broth. And since it came out so good, that's just the way I've always done it. So you do what you want, but I let that boil and reduce until I got it down to this point. And once that's been accomplished, we can turn off the heat, and we can transfer our beef into the bottom of our slow cooker. And we'll make sure that all fits in, in uniform layer. And by the way, yes, you can do the exact same thing in a Dutch oven, and this recipe will work out exactly the same. And then once that beef shoulder has been situated as shown, and we've transferred over any of the remaining accumulated juices, we will add some sliced up celery, and chunked up carrots to the crock. And yeah, somehow one of the carrot tops got past my quality control people, so I pulled that out, and I saved it for a little chef's net, before distributing those veggies here and there. And once we've wasted a few seconds doing that, since it probably doesn't matter, we will carefully transfer in our cooking liquid. And there should be plenty enough to cover the meat. And that's it. We'll grab the lid, and we will lock that on. And then we will cook this very slowly on the low setting, for like six, seven, or eight hours, depending on the size and shape of our meat, and which brand of slow cooker we're using. But we're not going by time, since we're going to cook this until it's fork tender, no matter how long that takes. Oh, and one tip here, whenever you go in for a peek at the meat, instead of letting all that condensed moisture go back into the crock, I like to drain that into a bowl next to the slow cooker, which is going to help our sauce thicken up a little bit, as well as concentrate the flavors a little more. And even though it's only going to be a couple tablespoons each time, if you did that six times, you'd have close to three quarters of a cup of water, which is way more than nothing. But anyway, we'll continue to cook, and remove liquid, and test for doneness, until, like I said, our meat is fork tender. And right here, my time, it had lapsed, and the slow cooker had shut down. So I gave it a test to see if it needed more time, but it was actually feeling perfect. And once we are happy with the doneness, we'll go ahead and remove the meat to a platter. And besides the meat, we'll also remove the aromatic vegetables, and we'll keep everything warm for a few minutes, while we finish our sauce. And for that, what we'll do is turn the setting to high, so that our sauce is simmering, at which point we have to make a few decisions. The first one being, should we skim the fat off the top, which I usually do most of. And then the other decision is, should we serve the sauce as is, or thicken it up a little more. And personally, I would be fine with this, but I do want to show you a really nice trick, which involves adding a little bit of cornstarch to some water, to form what we call in the business, a slurry. And once we give that a stir, and it's nicely dissolved, we'll go ahead and whisk that into our simmering sauce. And almost instantly, it will thicken up slightly, and get a little bit shiny, and your sauce will have a little more body to it. And even though I really didn't have to do it here, as I said, I want you to know about this technique, since we're heading right into peak sauce and gravy season. And if one of those is a little too thin for your liking, this is a very fast and easy way to thicken it up a bit. But anyway, that's optional, and for you to decide. I mean, you are after all this deaf curry, of whether to use a slurry. And that's it. Besides tasting that for seasoning, we'll go ahead and spoon that over our meat and veggies. Of course, reserving a whole bunch of it, to serve alongside our mashed potatoes. And yes, I always strain this before it goes on, since I find those little particles of onion and garlic and celery a little bit distracting. And I just think the sauce looks better in its purified state. And then I think this is so beautiful, we could just leave it alone. But to complicate things, I decided to garnish with some sautéed apples, plus a nice scattering of freshly snipped chives, which I thought would look really nice on top. But anyway, garnish or not, we will cut up some nice thick slices of meat, and serve those on some mashed potatoes, with copious amounts of our sauce being ladled over the top. And that's it, I grabbed a fork and knife, and went in for the official taste. And that, my friends, really was a truly amazing bite of pot roast. All right, as you know, I usually do these kind of recipes, so I have an excuse to eat mashed potatoes. But here, I enjoyed the actual meat every bit as much. All right, I think the balance here between the acidity and the sweetness was perfect. And like I said in the intro, even though this is a more common preparation for pork shoulder, I think this works just as well on the even more flavorful beef. And because of the cooking time, the slow cooker really is a nice way to do this. But a dutch oven on low heat, with a tight-fitting lid, will pretty much produce the same magical results. But no matter which method you use, I think you and yours are gonna love this much as I did. And this might very well end up being the pot roast you enjoy the most, which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon. So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info, as usual. And as always, enjoy!