I grew up in New England. My ancestors far enough back were even Puritans who came on the second Mayflower. So one of the dishes I grew up with was pot roast. Like most of the food my parents made it was bland and tasteless and I hated it. (My parents were pretty terrible cooks, on top of the traditional)
Then over this weekend there was this nice cut of roast on a managers special and kinda without thinking I made a pot roast, but following my developing instincts in the kitchen instead of what I was raised with.
And oh my gods it turned out so good.
What I did was start by doing a dry brine, salting the meat and seasoning it with an Herbs De Provence mix all over the night before. Then the next day, chopped up an onion, a couple carrots, a couple ribs of celery and a couple potatoes to make the bed in the bottom of my crock pot. Along with a bit of salt and a goodly amount of peppercorns. The meat I cut into four large pieces so I could fit it in the pot, seared in a pan on each side, then added in on top of the veggies. After I took some of the veggie stock I've been making from scraps, used that to deglaze the pan and then poured over all the good flavor from the bottom of the pan into the pot, along with enough veggie stock to cover just the veggies. My thinking being to more dry roast everything at first and go for medium rare pieces of meat I could slice... but then I forgot to plug in the crock pot. For at least a couple of hours.
Was really worried I'd ruined it, but went ahead with trying to get it hot as quick as I could. Was pretty confident with the mean brined, seared and covered the whole time it would be fine as long as I cooked it thoroughly. Took more of the veggie stock, put it in a sauce pan and got it to a boil while the crock pot was heating up on high. Poured in the boiling liquid so it almost but not quite covered everything, so I could bring everything up to that boiling temp at once and keep it there. Was worried this would make it bland, but at least better odds of being safe to eat in the end.
It didn't make it bland. Cooking all those things in veggie stock and other seasonings together until the meet was fall apart tender made it so amazingly savory my brain kinda melted. I didn't get to each much of it the night I made it because it finished so late I had to eat while it was cooking (made the beer brats I posted yesterday). But today I was able to take container of the leftover broth and drippings from the bottom of the crockpot and turn it into a gravy that just enhanced it even more.
I swear the stuff tastes like 'home', but if my childhood home was a place of good memories I wanted to go back to (it just isn't). That sort of warming savory comfort food.
Also, I just looked up traditional New England pot roast. It really does just use carrots and potatoes. What the heck. If you want to get real flavors going you need a good mix of complimenting veggies, and for stuff like this you can't go wrong with carrots, celery and onion together.