Susan’s Easy Delicious Pot Roast

1 chuck roast, or the cheapest, thickest roast you can find (ask the butcher if you don’t see one). Hopefully it will be 3” thick or more. Tenochitlan (Latino) Market on 7200 S & State has great ones. (I find most butcher departments lacking in these.)
*1 onion *Half bag of carrots *Salt & pepper * fresh garlic * water

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Heat an oven proof dutch oven or large soup pot on the stove top on medium high heat & sprinkle salt so it almost covers the entire bottom of the pan. This will look like more salt than you’d imagine using.
Take roast out of packaging & blot off any moisture with paper towels. Place meat in hot pan, on the salt, & sear all sides. Let it brown but don’t let it blacken. Once it’s browned, go next step.
Add about 1 ½ - 2 cups of water to the pan, but don’t pour the water on the roast or you’ll lose some of that nice browning you just did. (Bigger roasts need more water.) I don’t measure this, I just eyeball it with a drinking glass.

Grind some black pepper over the meat.

Toss in a few cloves of peeled garlic; either on top of meat or into the water.

Peel & slice (thick) 1 peeled onion & lay the slices on the top of the roast.
Bring the water to a gentle boil, put a lid on it & bake in oven 4 or more hours, depending on how thick the meat is. Over three inches thick will take more like 5-6 hrs. The longer you wait, the better it will be. It will be fall-apart tender.
About an hour before your estimated finish time, peel a half a bag of carrots, cut in half width wise & lengthwise; toss them into the broth that is now in the bottom of the pan. It’s ok if some go on top of the roast at this point.

Cooking the meat this low & this slow melts the tough gristle & meat fiber into succulent pieces. You can serve as is or use the broth to make gravy. I like to save the broth to make gravy or another recipe another day, that way the fat is separated easily. It will be really salty but that’s ok, you won’t need to salt the gravy.

You can toss other veggies into the pot with carrots or roast some baking potatoes for 1.5 – 2 hrs (this slow baking temp cooks too slow for potatoes to bake in just one hour). I’ve used prunes on top of the roast with the onions (I think Craisins would be great too), & studded garlic slivers into the meat. Also I’ve used water with apple juice & a splash of leftover 7UP as the liquid & it turned out great (with sprigs of fresh thyme). So just fiddle with it & see what you can come up with. And let me know!

And be careful with that pot lid; once you take it out of the oven, don’t pick it up again without pot holders; it’s searingly hot for a while. I often forget that tip; ouch.

You can make roast beef sandwiches with leftovers & use the broth for au jus. Just slice the meat against the grain so it will not be stringy. The au jus might need to be thinned with a little water if it’s too salty.