New England Pot Roast

Last summer my mom and I bought a rump roast at her Saturday morning Farmers' Market. This wasn't just any rump roast. It was significant in many ways. First, it was the biggest hunk of meat I had ever purchased. I haven't always been much of a meat eater. Second, it was the biggest (and possibly the first?) piece of grass-finished beef we had ever bought. We planned to cook it together some time last fall/winter, but somehow that never happened.

So I decided to serve it to my in-laws, who visited last weekend. I took it out of the freezer on Wednesday night. I don't really see my husband on Wednesdays right now, because of a class he is taking an hour and a half away from home. On Thursday he told me his mom was taking him (and presumably) me out for dinner at his favorite Japanese restaurant on Saturday night. So I rearranged my mental menu and decided to make the pot roast on Sunday.

The Japanese food was great, and the pot roast turned out well also.

My mother used to serve (something very similar to) this dish when I was a kid, so "pot roast" is defined in my mind as a hunk of beef, carrots, potatoes, and onions. Pot roast, in most of my cookbooks, has a LOT of other ingredients, and many of them don't even have carrots or potatoes. Hmm.

Fortunately I kept flipping through Betty Crocker, and found her "New England" Pot Roast, which was everything what I expected pot roast to be, with the lone addition of a jar of horseradish sauce, which I skipped anyway. I don't know much about horseradish sauce, but I know that what Betty wanted me to use came in a jar from the grocery store, and I wasn't about to ruin a perfectly 100% local meal by adding something processed by someone far away in a factory. (I almost ruined the localness of it by adding a package of California mushrooms. Fortunately, even if my conscience would not have stopped me the size of my pan did. Stay tuned for more on those oh-so-alluring but entirely non-local mushrooms.)

I used 1 lb, 13 ounces of rolled rump roast from Jordandahl Farms (I always thought my mom cooked her pot roast in the crock pot, but I learned on Sunday night that she doesn't. She cooks it in the green Dutch oven that she gave me, which I gave back to her after I got this set of Cuisinart stainless steel pots and pans for a wedding shower gift. She does cook her roast in the oven, which I did not want to do because . . . well, I had a recipe that said to cook it on the stovetop, and you know how I feel about deviating from recipes. Most of the time.)
Local candy onions from my grocery store and potatoes from my CSA
Potatoes from my garden

Another look at "those" "potatoes" - you won't find this at the grocery store!

Carrots from my garden
That carrot on the right is not a short, squat carrot variety. It was just a regular carrot with a rock in its path, so it got wider instead of longer. I'm going to have to try the "stuck on a rock" excuse for why I grow wider instead of taller after eating too many yummy dinners like this.

Another shot of my beautiful "misshapen" carrots for anyone in New York who loves funky veggies.
Full Pan!
Dinner (Sorry I don't have a picture of the gravy that went with this.)

I think the dish turned out well. I went back for a second helping of carrots. And it made three generous portions of leftovers. Not bad since Betty's recipe made enough food for eight servings, and I used less than half of the amount of meat she called for.