Ree Drummond calls this recipe perfect…That’s hard to believe.

Time: 3 hours and 45 minutes

Difficulty: 2/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

I don’t remember the last time I had a pot roast, but I don’t think I enjoyed it very much. To me, a pot roast just sounds boring. A big piece of tough beef cooked in broth of hours just doesn’t sound like it could be all that great or interesting. So, why did I decide to make it? Whenever a recipe incudes words like ‘perfect’ and ‘best’, I naturally want to to see how close they get to their claim. I would say that it’s pretty rare that those recipes fully live up to the name, but every now and then you find something exceptional. On top of the stand out name of “Pefect Pot Roast,”  the recipe has very close to a perfect 5 star rating. I had to give it a try.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

I have celery in the picture, but this recipe doesn’t call for it. I kinda assumed it would be in there, so I took it out in the prep. I did not use it in the recipe, however. One thing left out of the picture that I did use was red cooking wine. I didn’t realize I had some until it was getting close to the time that it could be added. When I found it, I just went ahead and used it. Everything that this recipe called for was used.

Tools:

• Big Pot or Dutch Oven

• Sharp Knife

Cooking Review:

Prep: 15 minutes

The prep for this recipe is pretty simple. I just seasoned my beef with salt and pepper before cutting down my carrots and onions.

Cooking onions and carrots: 7 minutes

This step goes by quickly. I cooked the onions in the hot olive oil for 4 minutes total, flipping multiple times to get relatively even browning. The carrots took only 2 minutes to brown. Both were put on a plate once done.

Searing Beef: 10 minutes

Searing the beef to my liking took a little longer than I was expecting. I flipped it multiple times, trying to get at least decent color on each side. Depending on your cut, you might find it very floppy and difficult to flip with tongs and get the sides without holding it up yourself. Otherwise, this step was mostly hands off. I put the beef on a separate plate when I thought it had enough color, but you could just put it on top of the onions and carrots.

Deglazing and Cooking: 3 hours and 6 minutes

With the beef removed, I deglazed the pan with red cooking wine, scraping the bottom of the pan with the silicon tongs I was using for the steak and vegetables. Once most of the bottom was clean, I added the beef back in and filled the pot with beef broth until the roast was about half way submerged. I didn’t measure it out, but I think it was about 3 cups of the broth. The vegetables and herbs were added and the pot was covered before being put into the oven for 3 hours.

Analysis:

As expected, this low and slow cooked beef was very tender. Portioning it into my bowl took little to no effort, as the beef easily broke apart with a little pressure from my fork. Besides that, the first thing I noticed was how flavorful it was. Given the relatively sparse ingredients list, I was expecting the flavors to be flat and boring. However, there was plenty of deep and interesting flavors. I could definitely taste the herbs (mostly the rosemary), and the onion and carrot contributed some of their flavors along with some sweetness to the whole dish. Speaking of the carrot and onion, they were very soft while maintaining a good amount of flavor themselves. I don’t usually enjoy cooked carrots, but I had no issue with the ones in this pot roast. The onions were very sweet and went very will with the beef. Unfortunately, the beef itself, while very flavorful, was a little dry. I’m not sure why, but It was nonetheless. I thought I’d miss having potatoes or some garlic, but I really didn’t. Everything in this recipe is there for a reason and there’s nothing extraneous. One adjustment I would make is that if you really enjoy the vegetables, you could add more to make it a little more interesting, or even just more carrot, as I found myself looking for more of them. Overall, I’ll give this recipe a 9/10. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but it’s pretty close. Given how few ingredients there are, how simple it is to make, and how flavorful it is, it’s not hard to see why others have rated it 5/5 stars.