Drunken pot roast

I love pot roasts. They’re easy and look after themselves. If you’ve got all day, you can cook it slow and low for hours and hours, and it just keeps getting more tender and flavourful. If you’ve only got two hours, raise the heat and get it done. Up to you, it’s still and amazing dish, and leftovers are the best part!

What you need:

Roast:
– 1 roast 3-5 pounds
– 3 cups red wine
– 1 large Spanish onion or 2-3 medium yellow onions, chopped
– 12 – 16 white muhsrooms, halved
– 3 cloves garlic, sliced up
– 2 tablespoons butter
– Salt and Pepper to taste

Gravy (optional)
– 3 tablespoons butter
– 1/4 cup of flour

What you do:

Preheat oven to 250°. In roasting pan add the wine, onions, mushrooms, garlic, salt and pepper. Put in oven without roast, covered.

On medium-high in a big grilling pan/frying pan, melt the butter, season the roast with salt and pepper, and then sear the roast on all sides. This helps to lock in the flavour and juices. Place seared roast in the oven in the pot and cover.

Let cook for 4 to 5 hours. You can remove the cover for the last half hour to reduce liquid.

Remove from oven. Carve the roast into thin slices and then return them to the pot to soak in the sauce.

My boys love this dish and really like when I make some of the jus into gravy to go with the roast.

Gravy: Melt butter in a sauce pan on medium-high. As the butter starts to fry, add flour by the tablespoon and blend quickly. When it becomes paste-like, start ladling the jus from the roast into the paste, whisking together. Keep adding jus until you reach your desired thickness. We like our gravy thick.

If you’re short on time, you can raise the oven temperature to 350° and cook for about 90 minutes. Rich, full-bodied red wines work best for this recipe. If you don’t have red on hand, you can substitute with beer – the darker the better. Guinness or dark ale is perfect, but it will even work with lighter beers.