Pot Roast, Italian Style My Way

Pot Roast, Italian Style

The key to a perfect pot roast is to cook the meat until it is meltingly tender but not so much that it looses its flavor.  To accomplish this, keep your heat as low as possible and begin checking the meat at two hours.  You can use a boneless chuck roast but I think the bone adds body and flavor to the sauce.  Cooking dishes like this one makes me like winter.

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  1 4-5 pound bone in chuck roast
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  salt
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  2 tablespoons salt
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  4 ounces pancetta, chopped
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  1 large red onion, chopped
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  2 garlic cloves, minced
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  1 cup chopped celery
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  1 cup chopped carrots
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  1 14-ounce can stewed tomatoes, drained and tomatoes chopped
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  1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained and tomatoes chopped
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  3 sprigs thyme
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  1 bay leaf
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  1 1/2 cups red wine
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  3 cups veal stock
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  2 tablespoons butter, softened
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  2 tablespoons flour
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  salt to taste

Trim off excess fat from the chuck roast and season with salt.  Let sit at room temperature for one hour, up to two.  Heat a large saute pan over medium high heat, add the oil and sear the meat on one side until well brown.  With two tongs or a large spatula, turn over and brown the other side well.  Place meat in a large dutch oven and set aside.

Keep at least 2-3 tablespoons of fat in the pan and add the pancetta and slowly cook to render the fat and ultimately begin to brown the bacon, about 5 minutes.  Add the onions and cook for 2 minutes over medium heat.  Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds before adding the celery and carrots; cook for two more minutes.  Add both tomatoes, the thyme and bay leaf and simmer for an additional minute.  Add the vegetable mixture to the chuck roast.  Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce for three minutes.  Add the veal stock, bring to a boil and reduce for an additional three minutes.  Add the wine/stock mixture to the chuck roast and bring the mixture to a boil.  Lower the heat and place a parchment lid over the vegetables and meat; cover and simmer, checking periodically for three hours, or until completely tender.

When the meat is tender, turn the heat off and let the roast rest in the sauce for half an hour. Remove the meat to a bowl or large plate and set aside while you finish the sauce. Strain all of the vegetables from the sauce; set aside. Defat the sauce by pouring the broth into a fat separator, pour the broth into a saucepan. 

Reduce the sauce until full of flavor and begins to thicken.  If the sauce is not thick enough and the flavor is perfect, mix the two tablespoons of butter with the flour and add the mixture, a few teaspoons at at time into the boiling sauce and whisk.  Let simmer for a few minutes before adding more.  It will take the flour a bit of time to thicken the sauce.  You may not need all of the butter/flour mixture, use just enough to thicken the sauce to coat the back of a spoon.  You can add a few of the vegetables mixture back into the sauce to create some texture. Use a light hand, too many vegetables will reduce the flavor of the sauce.

 Now it is time to prepare the meat.  I remove the bones, sinew and fat from the meat before I reheat and slice it.  As you can see the raw meat is broken down into sections divided by the bone, fat and sinew.  Once the meat is cooked I remove all of that to leave only the good pieces of meat.  Once you slice the meat your guests will not have to deal with the inedible parts.  This is not a necessary step but a nice one and really quite satisfying to do.  I then reheat the sections in the sauce and once hot, I remove and slice them into serving pieces.  You could cook the roast up to placing the sections into the sauce and refrigerate for a few hours up to a few days.  As with any braise, the flavor only gets better as the meat sits with the sauce.  Yet, I served this up right after I cook it last Sunday and I could not imagine it any better.

I hope you try and enjoy this wonderful Sunday Supper entree, my family sure did.