Mama's Pot Roast (sorta)

 Mama's Pot Roast recipe, kinda tweaked a little 

3 lb. rump roast 

Salt and pepper  

Plain flour 

1 envelope onion soup mix 

A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce or red wine vinegar 

Chicken stock 

Water  

Potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks 

Salt, pepper, and flour a roast. Heat a deep skillet with a lid, or a Dutch oven with a lid, to medium hot. Add a bit of vegetable oil and brown the roast on all sides. (By the time you finish browning it, the skillet might be smoking a bit, so remove it from heat.) 

Lift the roast from the skillet and prepare it for long-term cooking – you’re going to want the roast to spend half of its time with the fat side next to the heat. Pour a cup of chicken stock and a half cup of water into the skillet. Put the roast back in the heat, making sure the fat side is down. Sprinkle the half-envelope of dry onion soup mix all over the roast and around the perimeter of the pan. Sprinkle a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce over the roast and around the skillet. Finally, sprinkle a little water or chicken stock over the top of the roast -- just to moisturize the dry onion soup mix that might be sitting on top like little onion sprinkles.

Cover, reduce the heat of the eye to “low” (about a 2.5 to a 3), and cook for one half hour per pound of roast. (So with a 3-lb. roast, you’ll be cooking for a total of an hour and a half.)

Turn the roast over halfway through. That fat cap that protected it from the heat on the bottom of the pan can now seep through the roast and keep it moist.

Prepare your potatoes while you wait. Peel them and cut them up into 2-inch trapezoids. After the roast is finished, you can remove it from the Dutch oven, put it on a cutting board or plate, and tent it with aluminum foil. Add the potatoes to the liquid left in the pan. (If necessary, you might need to add a couple of tablespoons of water and some more Worcestershire sauce.) Try to make sure the potatoes are mostly submerged in the liquid. Re-cover the vessel and let cook for 20-25 minutes until the potatoes are tender and infused with gravy. Yummers.

(You may want to return the roast to the pot for a few minutes to re-heat, but it is probably still hot even after 20 to 25 minutes of sitting in a tent.)

Serve with seasoned green beans and yeast rolls.

Note: Very old recipe. Your mileage may vary.

Mama didn't use chicken stock.

I confess, Mama didn't use chicken stock, and I find that it makes a more flavorful gravy, so instead of the water that Mama used, I use chicken stock. I do water it down a little... that counts as Mama's recipe, then, doesn't it? I sure hope so.

She also crammed the potatoes into the pot with the beef during its last 25 minutes of cooking, but years of making this recipe meant that I knew I couldn't get all the potatoes I wanted to get into the cooking liquid. The pot was too full; the liquid too low. If I added enough stock or water to cover the top of the potatoes, it watered down the gravy to the point that it wasn't thick, luscious gravy.

So I take the roast out of the pot, and I add the potatoes, and I cook them in that delicious pot liquor until they're soft and delicious.

This particular recipe makes particularly good leftovers for slicing thin and making sandwiches. See how rare the center of that roast is? That's beef flavor all over the place, and it's still there the next day when you make a sandwich.

I recommend mustard for the sandwich.

Save the gravy for the leftover potatoes, which are divine. Mm, mm!

Let me know if you had to wrestle with your roast as much as I do with the tongs when it's time to flip it over. That thing's a slippery bugger! But it's worth it in the long run. Enjoy!

--Bay