Complicated Pot Roast

Taste: Pretty good.

Cleanup: Lots of stuff.

Ingredients: Mostly available at Publix (proper size hunk of meat is hit or miss)

Original recipe at: Best Ever Instant Pot Roast. This is a more complicated to prepare pot roast recipe than the simple Pot Roast recipe which is near zero prep and cleanup. The theory is that this will be better.

There is a long video and recipe in the link above, I took the time to figure out what I thought was the most logical sequence of steps:

• Collect spices for the rub (see the list in the original recipe).
• Rub the roast and set aside.
• Cut up onions into wedges (2, or 3 onions if they are small) and slice garlic (3 or 4 cloves).
• Put 2 tablespoons oil in instant pot, set to saute and high and let it get hot.
• Sear the meat 1 to 2 min on each side (The last time I seared a pork roast it spattered everywhere, but maybe I had too much oil, this didn't have a spatter problem).
• Take out the meat and set aside.
• Add a hunk of butter and stir with wooden spoon to scrape and deglaze pot.
• Add the onions and continue to stir and deglaze for 2 minutes.
• Add the garlic slices and 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and stir for another 2 to 3 minutes (the Worcestershire really did the trick for deglazing, the previous steps didn't clean off much).
• Place the trivet in the pot with handles up and put the meat on top of the trivet. Break up the mushrooms and put on top of the meat.
• Pour in 1 cup of wine and 2 cups of beef broth (after improvising a corkscrew with a wood screw and pliers since I didn't realize the bottle had a cork :-).
• Wrap 1 lb of baby potatoes in foil and 8 oz of baby carrots in foil and put the foil packets on top of meat.
• Secure the lid, set to "sealing" and say "manual" for 60 minutes.
• At end of cooking, natural release for 15 minutes, followed by quick release.
• Remove foil packs and set aside to cool for a bit.
• Remove trivet with meat on it (probably want to scrape any mushroom bits into bottom of pot first). Turn meat onto cutting board and let cool.
• Make slurry of 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and 3 tablespoons of water in a small bowl, mix until smooth.
• Set pot on saute/high again and bring to a boil. Dump in the carrots and taters (removing them from the foil first :-).
• Once the pot is bubbling again, dump in the cornstarch slurry and the au jus gravy packet. Stir and bubble for a minute, then turn off the pot.
• Slice the meat against the grain into about 1/4 inch thick slices, then slice the slices into squares. Dump them and any meat fragments in the pot and stir. Let sit for a while and stir again.
• You have pot roast.

OK, it is very very good, but I really don't know if it is worth the trouble compared to my other much closer to zero prep pot roast. The meat is really tender (I used chuck roast because that is what I found at publix - no rump roast, and I had to get two pieces of chuck to reach 3 lbs). The portobelo mushrooms are actually tougher than the meat at the end of this process :-).

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