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Pot roast. A delicious dish with an honest name. That's exactly what it is. Put a roast in a pot and you pot roast it. And that's what we're going to do today. But I'm going to shake my sleeves until every single trick has fallen out of them so that you can make the ultimate pot roast. A big thank you to Cook Unity for sponsoring this episode. You'll catch me eating a Cook Unity meal before I tackle a day of filming or while I'm editing an episode. If you're like me and you need a break from all the holiday food preparation, having Cook Unity meals in your fridge at this time of year is crucial. You get restaurant quality meals by award-winning chefs delivered fresh to your door. Today's lunch is
smoky brown sugar chicken by the one and only Marcus Samuelson. Go to the link in the description now to try Cook Unity and get 50% off your first order of chefade meals delivered fresh to your door. Use code Babish and try it out. So pot roast is something you've already done in a previous basics episode. Is there a reason for your revisiting it today? I did indeed explore pot roast on an old episode and I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed of a video from my past ever. I didn't know enough about marbling or about how different cuts of beef behave at the time and I was trying to make a budget pot roast. So I used I round which is the least brazable cut of beef next to filet
minan. when you see it plop down on the uh serving platter, you know, because it kind of bounces. It's so hard that it's it's so rigid. It's almost like a the way that a golf ball has inherent spring to it in order to be able to travel uh when struck. It's this the exact same principle. [snorts] So, this is kind of a botched episode then. It's kind of um But you're not here in this case. Not only am I alone, I'm cooking with headphones in, not even talking because there's active construction in the basement. This is just about as opposite from a botched as it could possibly be. The only thing it has in common is that it's correcting a heinous mistake of mine from the past. But what if we cut to the botched theme
music right now? What is the Bible? So, before we can do any pot, first we have to talk roast. And today, we're going to be using one of my very favorite cuts of beef, flat iron. This cut's versatility was introduced to me by Max the meat guy, who I think they should call Max the sweet guy. He's a very sweet guy, but he's also very knowledgeable in terms of meat. And he showed me that not only can you just sear off a flat iron just like it's any other steak, but you can also braze it slow and low and it will come out with an incredibly perfect texture. I can think of very few cuts of beef that you can do that with. It's full of all different kinds of fat and connective tissue, which you think would
make it tough, but it doesn't. And when you braze it, all that collagen and connective tissue breaks down and turns into a super moist, super tender pot roast. Normally, you want to go with a whole flat iron like this one. But at the time of this shoot, the only one I could get my hands on was in two pieces. So regardless of what size and shape they are, we're going to liberally season them with the tuxedo blend. That is an even mix of freshly ground black pepper and kosher salt, making sure to thoroughly coat all facets. Then we're going to optionally wrap these guys up in plastic wrap. You could also leave them open if you want to get better crust. And we're going to fridge them at
least 4 hours, ideally 1 to two days. This is going to deeply season the roast. It's going to make it more tender and it's going to help it retain more moisture throughout the cooking process. The flat iron is less expensive than most cuts of beef and it's delightfully delicious. So, seek it out whenever you can. Or maybe don't so they don't raise prices. Keep it our little secret. Keep it just between us chickens. Okay. Then some vegetable prep. First up are onions, which I'm going to meticulously peel and cut in half, maintaining the core at the bottom of the onion and being sure to
cut directly through the center of that core when cutting the onions in half lengthwise. This is going to help them keep their shape and not fall apart during the cooking process so we can end up with these big, beautiful whole pieces of brazed onion at the end. Then we have our stewing veg. We have some carrots and celery, which of course I'm just going to peel and chop finely. And we're also going to add a parsnip for a hint of sweetness and some lovely root vegetable flavors. And for even more sweet, subtle onion flavor, we're going to add some leak. Specifically, the whites of the leak.
Hang on to the greens because we're also going to make a bouquet garnier. But we're going to finally chop up about one cup of the leak whites, which I'm going to thoroughly wash cuz these are usually pretty dirty. The way I like to dry these out, spread them out evenly on a clean kitchen towel and then roll them up in the kitchen towel and press and squeeze them. This really thoroughly dries most vegetables as long as you can apply some pressure to them. Then, of course, we need some garlic. I'm just going to take a whole head of garlic and cut it in half widthwise, exposing all the cloves. Lastly, we're going to make a bouquet garnier. To make one, grab a wide green leak leaf. Then, we're going
to stuff it with a couple sprigs of thyme, a springrig of fresh rosemary, two dried bay leaves, and a springrig of fresh parsley. Then, we're going to tie this together using butcher twine at the top and the bottom. It's an elegant little package to make sure that your herbs don't fall apart and end up all throughout your brazing liquid. We're going to be siving our brazing liquid, so this really doesn't matter. But you want to feel fancy, you want to feel French for a day, make a bouquet garnet. Could people who don't like vegetables substitute fruit in this recipe? No, they cannot. If you don't like vegetables, you can't sub for fruit or anything else because frankly, that's uh
the vegetables are a big part of this dish. And if you don't like it, you should eat something else. Or I suppose you could just stew the beef on its own and you just have a big piece of beef. Your parents told you to eat your vegetables. They This is the day they were warning you about when I sat you down and I said, "All you get is beef with its own juice." Now, on to our grazing liquid. I want four cups of high quality beef stock, preferably homemade, but if you're going with the box stuff like I am, you can bolster it with gelatin. When you make homemade stock, it ends up chalk full of
gelatin, which makes it set up in the fridge like Jell-O. It also creates an incredible consistency to the sauce. It makes it thick and unuous and mouth coating, and it just it makes things taste and feel so much better when you're eating them. So, we're going to sprinkle one packet of unflavored gelatin over the top of our beef stock. And we're going to do it a little bit at a time, just enough to cover the beeftock so that the crystals aren't piling on top of one another, which is going to end up lumps. Go ahead and sprinkle about half the packet over top. Let it absorb completely. Gently mix it in. Then sprinkle the rest. Now, our beef is headed out of the fridge.
And if you wrapped it in plastic, we need to towel it off hardcore. We want the exterior to be super dry so that we can put a great crust on it. To sear the beef, we're going to do it in our intended cooking vessel. In this case, a large highwalled Dutch oven. Hit it liberally with vegetable oil. Get it smoking hot and press the beef down into the oil. Don't be afraid to move it around and lift it up to get more oil coating the beef so that it gets a nice even deep golden brown crust. We want to make sure we brown all sides, especially the fat cap. That fat cap is going to be delicious and it's going to be all the more delicious if we get some mayard, some browning, some caramelization on it. Once we got all
the beef brown, we're going to discard that nasty burnt oil. Save any fond in the bottom of the pot if it's not burnt. Add some fresh oil back to the pot and we're going to start sautéing our vegetables. Three to five minutes or even more till you get some nice browning on there. Not deep browning, but just a little bit of caramelization. Then we're going to add 1 to 2 tablespoon of tomato paste. This adds a wonderful hint of acidity as well as a deep rich red mahogany color. And we're also going to add 1/4 cup of flour. This is going to help thicken the braise as it cooks. Optionally add a splash of conac if you want to be super fancy. Let that cook off and then we're going to
add about a half bottle or two cups of dry red wine. I've got a nice pino noir here. Using that liquid to scrape up all the fond on the bottom of the pot. Make sure it's all scraped up before you add your beeftock or it's just going to sit there and burn on the bottom of the pot. Make sure not splash it around too hard. I'm also going to add about 1 tbsp of fish sauce. This is going to bring a whole bunch of savory unuous richness and maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. This is going to bring a nice acidic hit. It's going to lighten things up and just attack more flavor receptors in your mouth hole. Next up, a totally optional but awesome secret weapon, a couple of marrow bones. As the
pot roast cooks, these guys are both going to leech out a whole bunch of minerals and lovely stuff from the bones themselves. But more importantly, all of the marrow is going to cook, render out, and end up in the sauce. Then we're going to add the beef. I'm going to add a little bit more wine to make sure that everything is almost fully submerged. I'm going to arrange the onions all around the beef and bones along with our hald garlic bulb and of course our bouquet garnet. If you didn't make a bouquet garnier, just throw the herbs in there wholesale. Now, we're going to cover it with a tightly fitting lid and place it in a preheated 275° Fahrenheit oven for anywhere from 3 to 4
hours until the beef is so tender that using a knife on it is borderline insulting. But we don't want it falling apart because personally, I like distinct slices of pot roast in my pot roast. Now, you could get to serving this right away, but pot roast, like most stews, tastes even better after a night in the fridge. Plus, it's going to help us create an elegant presentation. So, I'm going to fish out the beef and the onions and the bones, wrap them in plastic wrap, and throw them in the fridge to cool off quickly. Then, I'm going to pass our brazing liquid through a fine mesh sie. Most pot roasts you just eat the vegetables that were in the braise along with potatoes. And that's definitely a classic
preparation, but everything ends up tasting the same. The potatoes taste like pot roast. The carrots taste like pot roast. The beef tastes like pot roast. The liquid tastes like pot roast. It's all just the same flavor with different textures. And I want distinct flavors and perfect textures across the board. So, I'm going to discard these veggies from the brazing liquid and treat the ones we'll be eating differently. If someone accidentally keeps the brazed vegetables and throws out everything else, how should they proceed? Start over. What? Why would you do that?
Well, you know, like they have something in two hands and they're they're a busy parent and their kid comes up and says something to them and they're like, "Oh, not right now, Billy. I'm depressed." And then they dump all of the, you know, the other stuff into the trash can. Well, what they'll be left with is a monoflavored nutritionalist slop. So, I don't know if I can give advice on what to do with that. Compost it. Could they maybe just eat they could eat that though, right? They sure could. But it would be I would say only as punishment for their mistake. And I don't think they deserve to be punished. I So, first things first, forgive yourself.
unconditionally. Just straight up forgive. Then make your next step, which is rehab. You should end up with about four cups of liquid gold. Place this in the fridge. You don't even need to cover it because, as you'll see, all the fat is going to rise to the top, solidify, and basically form a protective barrier over the liquid. And it's going to make it easy for us to scoop off the fat. You don't want to get all of it. Some fats obviously wonderful, but you don't want there to be a film of fat on top of your pot roast because then that just makes for a greasy eating experience. But hang on to that fat because it's delicious and we might put it to good use later. For now, we're going to flop this into
our intended serving vessel. I got this nice shallow brazer. Oh, that does not look terribly appetizing in slow motion. But all that gelatinousness, all that jiggle means that we have tons of gelatin in our braise liquid, which is going to translate to an incredible flavor and mouth feel. Now, onto the potatoes. Like I said, I don't like cooking the potatoes in the pot roast because then they just end up tasting like more pot roast. So, I've got some nice big old yellow potatoes here that I'm going to evenly coat in some vegetable oil and roast at 400° F for 45 minutes to an hour until they're completely cooked through. Now, on to the eaten veg. And I'm going with one
parsnip, two carrots, cut on the bias so they look fancy. And I want celery flavor, but what I don't want is hot celery. To bring that flavor, but to have a much more braise friendly texture, we have some cilerak or celery root. This is a big old nasty knobby looking thing that once you peel off all the rough exterior, you're going to be left with this sort of gem of sweet celery flavor that when braised, instead of turning fibrous and mushy, it just turns the same way that carrots do, just nicely soft. Now, I want the carrots to taste like carrots. I want the parsnips to taste like parsnips. To make sure that they retain their essential flavors, we're not going to just braze them to death.
We're going to roast them. So throw them into a bowl, a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil, sprinkle with kosher salt, few twists of freshly ground black pepper, and toss together before we roast. Now to roast, I'm going to preheat a baking sheet with a little bit of oil on it. So throw that sheet into a 400° Fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes until it's nice and hot, maybe a little bit of smoke coming off the oil. Now it's time to grab our meats and treats out of the fridge. I'm going to slice the beef into our intended serving slices. So, I'm going to cut it once across the grain, making big round slices. And then I'm going to cut those in half so that we end up with
these lovely pieces that if you get two of them, it's a great serving. Now, our onions are going to be beautiful and jammy and delicious, but I want them to have some caramelization. So, I'm going to brush them lightly with a little bit of vegetable oil and place them cut side down on our preheated pan. Then, I'm going to dump the rest of the vegetables alongside. These are going to roast together at 400° FHE for 20 to 30 minutes. And we're going to do some flipping halfway through. Now the consistency of my braise liquid is a little bit too thin. I want it to have body and I want it to have structure but not be gravy like. So we're going to make something called a burman. This is basically a rue but for post-prouction. So instead of
combining flour and butter and cooking it, we're going to combine fat and flour into a paste that we can add to our brazing liquid that will slowly thicken it. And for the fat, we're not just going to use butter. We're going to use our reserved brazing fat. So we add another hit of incredible flavor to this whole flavor situation. Making a burn manet is easy enough. We're just combining equal parts of the fat and flour. So two tablespoons of fat, 2 tbsps of flour. Then you just mash it together with your hands until it's a smooth paste. It's going to be more than we need probably. So I'm going to start by adding half of it to the simmering braze, whisking until it's completely dissolved and cooking for 5 to 10 minutes to see how it
affects the consistency. If it's still too thin, add the rest of the burman. If not, you're ready to go. You can see there's some fat swimming on top, and that's just going to be nice. Just a little bit of fat is always nice. What we don't want, however, is foam. If you got any foam or weird other crap floating to the top, spoon that stuff off because that's not going to go anywhere. It's going to end up in your finished dish. We're flipping the vegetables halfway through, particularly the onions. Flip them fast while they're still hot, otherwise they're going to stick. Putting them back in the oven, 20 to 30 minutes total. By the end, we should have some beautifully caramelized jammy onions and a whole bunch of hyper flavorful roasted
vegetables, which we're going to now add to the braze for the final stage of cooking. This is just going to let them soak up some of the liquid and soften and become more like pot roast vegetables without nuking their inherent flavor. Next up, we're going to optionally nestle in our marrow bones. I think it makes it look badass. Then we're going to arrange our beef slices together so that they can be easily retrieved so that we have just this channel of beef going through the center. Then remember that 400° Fahrenheit oven. We're going to turn it off and we're going to place this brazer uncovered into that off oven, letting the residual heat just sort of warm everything through and let those flavors get to know each other just a little bit
without assimilating one another. Meanwhile, the potatoes are cooked and what you're going to want to do is poke a bunch of holes in them before you roast them. Otherwise, they might genuinely burst in the oven. And I'm stabbing them very carefully so I don't have a disaster on my hands. Now, while these guys are still hot, we're going to cut them in half lengthwise just to let a whole bunch of steam escape off the potatoes. Then, we're going to let them cool just until they're cool enough to handle. At that point, we're going to cut them down into about 2 in pieces. Place them in a large sauté pan or saucepan. Sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Pour over about a/2 cup each heavy cream and butter. and get to mashing. I'm
making some rustic skin-on mashed potatoes. And this was about 5 lbs of potatoes, so maybe go with a cup each. Heavy cream and butter. It needed more richness. Taste for seasoning and keep warm until ready to serve. Potatoes have been shown to be one of the most filling foods, actually ranking highest on the satiety index. How then do I feel so empty after eating a family-sized bag of frozen French fries? I feel like this question isn't for me. You know, I kind of feel like you want to ask this to somebody qualified, somebody with a degree of some kind, a certification, a license, go on.
Go to therapy, dude. Go to therapy. Emptiness after eating a whole bag of French fries, that's you're depressed, and that's fine. That's not judgment. I'm depressed right now. And I see a therapist once a week for it. And that therapist keeps asking me if I'll come in more often, which is not a good feeling. I think we've had a breakthrough here today. And there you have it. Our pot roast is out of the oven, looking elegant as all hell. Look at that. It's chaotic, but organized. Frenetic, but intentional, not unlike the universe
itself. Make sure you drizzle some of that sauce over top in slow-mo. And we're just going to serve this on top of a giant pile of our mashed potatoes. Arrange some beef in there, some of our vegetables, drizzle plenty of sauce over top. Sprinkle with fresh parsley just because it really needs a pop of color. And there you have it. My ultimate pot roast. A fitting penance for the bouncy, bone dry, nightmare pot roast I made back in 2019. All right, time to see what it tastes like. Not going to need a fork where we're going.
Sorry, just a little bit of fun. Oh, baby. It is crazy tender. The real question is, is it juicy? And it is. The gentle reheat is key. If [snorts] you bring that to a simmer, you're going to dry it right out. All the liquid is going to be leeched right out and pulled into the sauce. And instead, you'll you'll have beef that's very tender, but sort of sandpapery. Let's try the vegetables. It's one of my favorite things about this is that those vegetables taste distinctly like themselves. That parsnip tasted like parsnip. That carrot tasted like carrot. And I love this the celery root because I want
the celery flavor without hot celery. Who likes hot celery? With the celery root, you're getting all the flavor with a much more pleasant texture. The potatoes are super rich and creamy. Oh man, it's good. I got to try one of these onions, though. Oh man. Those onions are my masterpiece. Those onions will be what you remember me for. If you remember me at all, it will be those onions. Those are kind of like Julia Child's onions where you sear pearl onions, get some color on them, and then braze them in beeftock.
Same vibe, caramelized, jammy. But these have the benefit of also having picked up all these stew flavors, all these herbs, all the everything else. Oh man. The vegetables are all cooked perfectly and you can taste their browning, but they're not hard or chewy or crunchy on the edges like you normally would get if you just took the vegetables out of the oven. That's fine and all, but in a stew now, they've taken on the proper consistency to be part of the pot roast. Best pot roast I ever had. Not just saying that cuz I made it and because I'm on camera. It's because it's true.
Every element is there. It's completely familiar, but every aspect of it is bumped up a little bit. Like, this is not a deconstruction or play on pot roast. This is pot roast babishified. And it's my actual lunch. So, goodbye. So, what did we learn today? Pot roast, as always, is awesome, but there's a host of little tips and tricks that you can employ to create incrementally improved results. I hope that you learn some of those today and that you try them for yourselves. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for watching and as always, if you're going to do it, do it with Babish. Here with Babish.
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