We love roast in our house. I have tried umpteen times to make it like my mom does to no avail.
I asked how she makes roast: A roast, Cream of Mushroom Soup, salt, pepper, onions, carrots, and potatoes in the crockpot.
Her roast is always fall apart tender.
Mine, not so much. Figured I was buying the wrong cut of meat, so I asked her what kind she buys. “Oh, you know, beef roast”. Chuck? Rump? Round? What? “I don’t remember, the cheap stuff.”
Thanks, Ma.
What kind of beef is best for a fall apart tender roast - either crock pot or oven cooked (since I just purchased a pretty dutch oven)? Some recipes too, please?
Long and slow will make any roast fall apart tender. Get yourself a chuck roast of a size. Dump some chunked onions into the crockpot. Add some carrots and maybe a diced turnip. Rub the roast with salt, and brown in a skillet. Place browned roast in crockpot. Add pepper, a bay leaf, a couple of shots of Worchestershire, either 1/2 can beer or 1 cup red wine and cook on low for 5-7 hours. The last 2 hours, add diced potatoes to the crock. (If you use waxy potatoes, you can put them in at the start with the carrots.) One hour before serving, add the Cream of Mushroom soup. (Or just add whole mushrooms.) When a fork can be inserted and rotated easily, it’s ready.
How are you cooking your meat? You want to cook it slowly at a very low temperature for a very long time. The collagen in the beef needs to melt into gelatin so the meat falls apart - juicy and tender. I don’t personally like beef but you should be able to attain that result with a number of cuts. Anything with lots of connective tissue to melt slowly under low heat - which should be cheaper cuts.
If you’re looking for cheap + fall-apart tender, I’d go for cheek, shank, or shoulder. Pork for the latter, and either beef or pork for the first two. I do pretty much what silenus recommends–sear it, then dump in some wine, stock, spices, and veggies (carrots, onions, celery, maybe mushrooms), then braise for several hours. At the end, I may make a roux to thicken the sauce if I want something more like gravy.
If I want to have potatoes, I typically cook them separately and make mashed potatoes.
this really depends on how you cook your roast. Cooking it in a crockpot is a wet method, and low and slow will produce a fall-apart roast. Rump roast, top or bottom round roasts would be good candidates. They’re all cheap and benefit from moist heat cooking.
Oven roasting will produce a more firm roast, and is probably recommended for cuts with more marbling like a rib roast, sirloin roast or for a roast to be sliced for sandwiches, an eye round roast. I like coating them in montreal steak seasoning.
When I make a roast it’s crockpot - roast (tried various types, but never seem to be the one my Mom uses), onions, cream of mushroom soup, beef stock, Worstershire sauce, Lipton Onion Soup mix, onions, potatoes, and carrots. I put all but the carrots and potatoes, cook on low for like 6 hours. Add in the taters and carrots and let go for another 2 - 3 hours.
Browning it good is the key. What you’re after is what’s called braising: browned meat cooked slowly in liquid. This works very well for tough cuts of meat, or for today’s pork, which is lean to the point of squealing.
I’d say that it’s probably a chuck roast. Generally a very cheap roast and does very well for this sort of slow braise. It has just the right proportion of fat for flavor and tenderness, as well. This roast will shred like rags, sort of stringy like. Very tender, very flavorful.
Nothing mysterious about cooking it, but I’m accustomed to my Mom’s Version of Chuck Roast which has the shit cooked out of it in the oven at 350 for about 2 1/2- 3 hours with nothing more than salt and pepper, carrots cut in half and potatoes peeled and quartered, and about a 1/2-3/4 cup of water to cover the bottom of an old lidded roasting pan. Start the roast covered, about the last hour take off the cover to brown up. People might balk at the high temperature and long cooking time, but it’s just about perfect in my book
Very simple- Test the roast occasionally towards the end of cooking, if it doesn’t pull apart or shred lightly with a fork just keep cooking it until it does. Add a little water if it dries out, but it shouldn’t. You can’t really burn something in a moist braise in a crockpot or dutch oven, and it will just get more tender the longer it cooks and the collagen breaks down.
Of course, the logical conclusion to this classical and very simple Mom’s pot roast with roast potatoes and carrots is a natural gravy finished in the same pan with the drippings, a drizzle of kitchen bouquet, and a flour and water slurry (I just shake 3 tablespoons of flour with about a cup of cold water in a jar.).
Your Mom’s “secret” might just be that she starts the roast and ingredients in the crockpot the night before on low. It can go a good 18 hours or longer on the low setting.
The key, as others have said, is to get a cut of meat with a high collagen content so that as it cooks, it gets converted into gelatin and becomes fall-apart tender. I would agree with silenus and recommend chuck roast for the most fool-proof application of this concept. I also would go with Chefguy’s recommendation to brown the meat prior to braising it. Browning develops a lot of great flavor.
After that, the meat pretty much cooks itself. Just put it in a liquid environment, bring to boil, reduce to simmer (so it just bubbles every so often), and cook until it’s at the tenderness level you desire. Usually, we’re looking at around 3 - 4 hours. Might be more, might be less. Just taste it every so often. As long as you’re simmering and not boiling the crap out of the liquid, you really can’t screw this up. In a crockpot, you might be looking at 8 hours or more. The meat is done when it’s done. If it’s not tender enough, wait.
I think I’ve identified your problem. You’re not doing it long enough. For low, you need to cook it like 12 hours to get it falling apart tender. On high, it takes like 6-8 hours.
Like others have said, brown it first and throw it in the slow cooker with a small amount of liquid. A can of cream soup works fine, but any liquid will work, even plain water (though it’s not very flavorful :p).
I’ve experimented with all kinds of things (here’s a nice tip – mix some soy sauce into the braise), and it will all get the toughest cut tender, but on low it takes a while. What I usually do is put it on high for 3-4 hours, then turn it down to low. It should be tender within 8 hours.
Last night we tried eye of round studded with garlic, liberal application of salt and pepper - put in a 500F oven for 8 minutes per pound, then oven off for 2 hours. Nom nom nom. Sucked not being able to roast potatoes in the oven too, but a mess of hobo potatoes sufficed.
I talked to Mom last night, told her how I cooked this roast. “Eye of round? What the hell is that? Never heard of it. It couldn’t have cooked with the oven off! You’re going to get sick!” I love her.
I’ve always had pretty good results with chuck roast, too. It’s a flavorful cut, though it WILL shrink from the fat melting. I think that ground chuck makes the best hamburger, too.
As others have said, BROWN that sucker. I had always just thrown the roast into the oven or slowcooker, until my daughter decided that she’d try browning it first. Now I just about always brown that meat first. Also, I panfry the onions and celery until the onion is transparent. That brings out a lot of flavor, too. Last, a pot roast needs some red wine. It adds flavor and tenderizes the meat.
It is a sin to eat pot roast without good crusty bread, spread liberally with butter.
I’ve never browned a roast before cooking. Maybe I’ll try it some day if I feel like making another pan dirty. I just do the “chuck it all into the slow-cooker when I leave for work” method, and I haven’t had a stinker yet.
I didn’t see it mentioned yet, but the classic piece of beef to use for pot roast is a “7 bone” - the name comes from the main bone resembling a 7, and not because there are seven bones int he meat.
Might be a regional thing, because I’ve never seen 7-bone roast around here. I’ve heard of it before, but not seen it around. Apparently, looking online, it’s also called chuck roast, center cut.
Strange. I grew up in Chicago, and that’s what a “pot roast” was called. It was when I moved out to California that people had no idea what a 7 bone roast was.
I’ll have a closer look next time, but I know the supermarket by my house doesn’t have that particular cut. Looking online, it does seem Costco sells the 7 bone roast. This may be one of those cases where now that I’ve heard of 7 bone roast (hadn’t heard of it before this thread), I’m going to see it everywhere and wonder how I’ve missed it all this time. Could just be the local butchers for me (who are mostly either Mexican or Polish). Also, during my Googling, I found that Cook’s Illustrated ranks the following as the best pot roasting cuts in order: chuck eye, 7 bone roast, and top blade.
