Wine and Garlic Pot Roast

This is an extremely easy stove top recipe for a flavorful pot roast. I've been making this for years, and it's always a pleaser!


Serves 6 hungry people, or 2 with plenty of leftovers.


Ingredients:
1 top, bottom or round roast between 3 - 4 pounds, this is a longer cooking method, so a more expensive cut would not make sense. (Don't use a chuck roast or your broth will be super fatty)

1 750ml bottle of red wine like a merlot or shiraz (it must be a drinkable wine, no rot gut!)

6 yellow or white potatoes medium sized

4-6 carrots - trimmed, peeled and cut in two

1 large vidalia (or sweet spanish) onion - cut up into six wedges

1 small yellow onion - diced

2 heads of garlic (yeah, I said two heads) - 3 cloves mangled and the rest of the cloves nicely peeled, kept whole

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 bay leaves

Salt and pepper

About 1 cup of fresh water

flour for dredging the meat

Olive oil


On to the cooking:

Preheat a heavy bottomed pot on the stove to medium, and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.
Cut the roast against the grain into three pieces. Season with salt and pepper and dredge in flour (shake off the excess flour.) Brown the cut up roast in the olive oil on all sides. Don't crowd the pan, if you need to brown each piece separately, do that. Remove the meat to a plate.

Toss in the 3 mangled cloves of garlic and the diced onions, season with a little salt and pepper. Add the thyme, and the tomato paste. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring occasionally.

By now, the bottom of your pot should look a mess. Some almost burnt spots, crusties from the meat and the dried out tomato paste with the spices and aromatics....now is the time to add the wine. Add it slowly at first, a little by little, scraping up all the goodness and mixing it around. When all the fond is scrapped up and incorporated, you can dump the rest of the bottle of wine in there. Toss in the bay leaves now.

Bring the wine sauce (not really a sauce yet) up to simmering, lower the heat, and put the meat down in the wine. If the meat is sticking out more than an inch, add a cup or so of water. Let this simmer covered for about 1 1/2 hours, checking it occasionally and turning the meat around each time.

After 1 1/2 hours, add the whole potatoes, halved carrots, wedged onions, and the 30 or 40 cloves of garlic you have meticulously peeled without marring. Cover and bring to a hard simmer. Lower the heat again, and simmer covered for another hour checking it occasionally.

From this point, I usually keep testing the meat with tongs to see if it just pulls apart. When the meat pulls without effort, and the veggies are tender, it is done.


Look at that beautiful garlic!

To serve:

Place portions of meat, one potato, a couple of carrot pieces, onion and garlic cloves in a large bowl. Ladle the broth/sauce on top. Serve with crusty bread for dunking!

An option that I meant to add tonight (and I usually do) is to add green beans during the last 10-15 minutes of cooking. I forgot this time. Oh well. I am too stuffed to care right now.