February 04, 2023

Pot Roast

We’ve reached the end of Season 4, finishing up at the Pot Roast recipe from “A Chuck for Chuck”. The final recipe for other seasons has usually been one that I kept putting off, and usually they turn out fantastically. This time was different, though, but I think it’s more of my mistake than the recipe’s.

I mentioned before that I was having a heck of a time finding bone-in chuck, but then I remembered Roxie’s in Quincy, and of course not only did they have bone-in chuck, they have seven-bone cuts, just like AB used in the episode.

Alton’s recipe called for a 2lb cut, but I picked up one almost 3.5 pounds, so I thought I’d cook it for the upper time limit of the recipe, 3.5 hours.

pot roast

Pictured above: cooked pot roast, “chunkies”, and the a jus before blending chunkies into it.

The meat was tasty but definitely overdone. I really should have checked it at 2.5 and 3 hours, which is my bad. The crowd didn’t think it was great, and we didn’t even save the leftovers because we wouldn’t have eaten them. The one shining light though was the cooking juice left in the foil that I drained and put in a bowl. It was really good – salty, sweet, savory. I portioned off half of it and blended in some of the “chunkies” from cooking, and that was pretty good as well.

If I ever get a chance to do another one, I’ll definitely try this again but cook it for much less time.

And that ends Season 4! I wish I could say it was a grand finale like some of the other seasons (fish n chips from Season 2, the fish in a salt dome in season 1, etc.) but these last two recipes of Season 4 were quite a disappointment. I went into this season saying that I wouldn’t leave the smoked salmon for last but maybe I should have – it was one of two 5-star recipes from this one.

On to Season 5! This one has homemade cold-smoked bacon, which I’m really looking forward to.

Pot Roast

  • Crowd: 2/5
  • Ease: 2/5
  • Used a 3.5 pound seven-bone chuck
  • The recipe said to cook for "3 to 3.5 hours" and it for a 2 pound roast, so I cooked it for 3.5, which overcooked it a bit.
  • The a jus was really good