Secret Agent Man fisks recipes:
Canned mushrooms are used by people who’ve never tasted real ones. I don’t think a seriously-miseducated palette is going to hit on a good recipe by anything besides coincidence, and since the recipe already has canned mushrooms, I don’t like the odds….
Pot-Roast, my friends, is pot-roast and it will remain pot-roast even if it’s been slathered in Miracle Whip or poached in root beer. The only thing such trickiness will produce is pot roast with an odd taste, like it was made with Miracle Whip or root beer. God has decreed a universe in which Filet and Sirloin are very, very good and in which pot roast is . . . well . . . what you have to eat a couple of times each month. Trying to reverse that order by jazzing up pot roast is the culinary equivalent of schism.
I think a good pot roast (e.g., the stuff at Golden Corral or in the packaged Hormel beef roast au jus, which is pot roast if you ask me) is delicious. Then again, you wouldn’t believe how much McDonald’s I ate in the 90s. So maybe my taste buds are seriously warped.
Pah . . . God decreed that certain cuts of the cloven-hoofed, quadruple-uddered, bovine ruminant would taste best grilled, and that certain cuts would taste best sauteed, and that certain cuts would taste best if you threw them in a pot and simmered them all afternoon. They’re all good, except, of course, for the gut parts, which are fitting food only for the canid who pants and piddles on the rug.
But I LIKE pot roast! Preferably cooked in the slowcooker all day long. But NOT with some weird Miracle Whip stuff on it. Bleah. (I only like Miracle Whip in my tuna salad–and I make GREAT tuna salad!)
Pot roast is good when it is treated with the proper respect. Miracle whip, on the other hand, is satan’s tool.
Pot roast can be delicious. Miracle Whip is not food, but a food substitute.
M’Lynn,
Gut parts of bovines are the best parts! I would trade a thousand filet mignons for a bowl of trippa alla fiorentina. And one cannot really be a foodie until one has had a good red burgundy with veal kidneys. Oh joy, oh yum, oh, how long would it take to get to Bistro Jeanty in Yountville this weekend, where they do a great job of veal kidney’s?
ewwwwwwww, Miracle Whip.
I have not found a crock-pot technique I like for pot roast, partly because I’m stuck on the idea of making gravy. But when I’ve tried making it in the oven, I haven’t achieved that yummy, tender, flavorful, falling-apart quality. (But then, is it supposed to have that quality?)
I think it is. Falling apart chunks good, dry little strings not so good.
The best way to avoid dryness is to cook your pot roast with a bit of concentrated brown stock (powdered will not do, although it provides decent flavor. True veal demiglace is very good, but I doubt that most people have true demi in the freezer) and something acidic (white wine (or dry vermouth) for a more delicate flavor, red for a more robust flavor). I also find that browning in very hot fat first is essential. Then, when you slice it, always cut against the grain. I am amazed at how many people do not do this.
Erik,
I will be a vegetarian before I ever eat another organ meat, especially tripe again!
We use canned mushrooms. I am actually the inverse to what Secret Agent Man described. I never even knew about canned mushrooms, always ate fresh. Then we moved here and discovered how convenient it is to keep an extra can of this, and a can of that around when the spirit moves me to add some mushrooms to my gravy (tomato sauce). I used to only buy fresh mushrooms when I had a specific recipe in mind, but I never bought them in advance “just in case”-they go bad too quickly.
I enjoy canned mushrooms! They’re sluglike, true; however, I like okra, too! I don’t equate canned mushrooms with fresh, but I like and use them both.
And I definitely brown pot roast first, as brown as I dare get it, on all sides, salting and peppering as I go; then I add a quart of water or (preferably) beef broth (I jazz up the water with Bouillion).
I let it simmer on the stove with an onion, some carrots and celery (and maybe even a parsnip!), and spices: rosemary, parsley, and thyme.
After an hour, I strain out the old veggies and add bite-size potatoes, carrots, and celery (and maybe a parsnip). These I simmer for 15 minutes on the lowest possible heat.
Then, for the final hour, I transfer the lot to a deep open pan and roast it in the oven at 325.
Tasty carrots and golden-brown potatoes; tender, but not mushy!
And you can deglaze the 3/4 quart of broth into whatever form of sauce you wish!
Erik–
I always try to slice against the grain, ESPECIALLY with Top Round (London Broil), the most notorious of all “slice against the grain” cuts.
But I find that the alleged “grain” changes direction 5 or 6 times!
This is why I no longer bother roasting London Broil, but ram it through my Christmas meat slicer and make cheesesteaks! (Hard to keep a knife sharp while hacking at the meat on the grill, though).
Satan invented miracle whip. Homemade mayo is SO much better!
Pansy,
Give tripe one more chance: either fly out to California and have it at Paul Bertolli’s restaurant, Oliveto’s, or use Paul Bertolli’s recipe for it in the Chez Panisse Cookbook. I have yet met anyone who ate that recipe and did not like it. Tripe is a wonderfully rich, economical dish that is perfect in winter.