I got one of these too, and I love cooking pot roast in mine. Here is what I do:
Ingredients:
- +1 nice chunk of beef, whatever you can find on sale. Sometimes this can be loin, london broil, or roast, etc. Most of the time its 2-3lbs of beef, maybe more.
- Freshly peeled potatoes, carrots, and chopped onions. Fill the dutch oven up, use whatever ratios of these that you want.
- Add 2 cups of water to the dutch oven, or about where there is 1" of water at the bottom.
- 1 package of lipton onion soup, dump it in and mix it with the water.
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 325 F.
- Sear the meat on all sides. I use one notch above medium heat. I pat the meat down with salt and black pepper, then put some butter in an iron skillet. The butter helps sear the meat and keep the meat from sticking at the same time. Heat the skillet up until the butter is completely melted and is sizzling before sticking the meat in.
- Gravy (optional) There will be residue in the skillet from searing the meat. You can dump a little water in there, and mix some flour in and make gravy, and dump this on top of the meat and vegetables if you want. I usually do this by eye, with no specific ratios. Etc, mix a little bit of water, and add flour and mix until I get the consistency I want. You need to let it cook down a bit. Like maybe 5-10 minutes at medium high heat.
- Place the meat in the bottom of the dutch oven with the water and soup mix.
- Scatter the vegetables in the dutch oven, and fill it up. I sprinkle a little bit of garlic salt on them.
- Cook @ 325F for 4 hours. Stick a fork in the meat, and make sure its tender, if not, put it back in and give it another 30 minutes. If you can't cut the meat easily with a fork, then it needs more time.
For chunks of meat more than 3 lbs, like for example, I cooked a 5lb roast one time, and had to cook it for 6 hours. I cooked the meat for 3 hours, pulled it out, dumped the vegetables in and cooked it for another 3 hours. Don't want the vegetables to cook into complete mush.
Its pretty hard to overcook a pot roast, you can go 30 minutes over and be perfectly fine. Mistakes are made with people undercooking the meat, and it comes out tough. If its tough, cook it more.
*optional* - You can make beef stew with the left overs. Day old pot roast makes the most awesome beef stew. I chop up the meat, and vegetables, and dump the juice in (skim the fat off) and add some water + a can of tomato sauce. You can include some other vegetables like corn of green beans to the stew. Let it simmer on low heat for 2 hours. Taste the broth before you add any extra spices to it, and add some salt, garlic powder, pepper, or a little bit of chili powder if you want to spice it up.
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