Go to the Recipe: Level Up Your Grandma’s Pot Roast
What pressure cooker are you using in this recipe?
Are you guys back?! I’m loving all this new content.
Looks like the Kuhn Rikon Hotel. Get it from the outlet store if you ever end up in Switzerland.
How would you suggest I make the roast in an instant pot? Unfortunately I don’t have a traditional pressure cooker and just picked up an instant pot on Black Friday.
Christmas came early - you guys are B A C K...long may it last
Love this thoughtful approach to pot roast -- deconstructed, but entirely recognizable, only better.
Would really appreciate clarification from Chefsteps on quick release vs natural release on a couple of steps in the recipe. In Step 5, after a long 2 hour cook at high pressure with just essentially meat in the cooker, we are to "Let the pressure release from the cooker", which would seem to indicate a natural release. Then we add the carrots and potatoes and cook some more before we "Release the pressure from the cooker" in Step 6. Are we quick releasing the pressure before adding the celery?
----- Broader question I'd really appreciate some feedback on: as an avid pressure cooker enthusiast for 15+ years now (kuhn rikon 7L---right up there with Joule as my best kitchen investment ever!), has anyone actually tested quick vs. natural release for various types of food? I generally rest when not in a crazy hurry as I feel it doesn't hurt with flavor integration and would mitigate any potential textural damage from a quick release. I've recently noticed that PC recipe trends seem to be encouraging more quick releases or timed releases (e.g., "wait 10 minutes, then quick release"). But how does quick release actually affect specific foods?
Sous Vide pot roast is also totally yumazing - especially on a week night when I only want to spend 15 or 20 minutes reheating a bag in the bath. I'll have to try this. The last roast I put in the InstaPot was juicy but tasted dry.
Follow the recipe as posted. High pressure is OK if you have a Duo. Just set the times as shown manually. Huge difference in allowing the pot to release naturally and add veggies for a shorter time. If you do the taters for two hours with the meat you will end up with cotton balls. This way works way better.
Lovin Grant on Monday nights too!!!!!!
Gelatin...of course. It seems so obvious once I see it, but I'd never thought to add it to stock.
Just made this for my family. They enjoyed it but all said under salted. Go figure, usually they say too much salt. Glad you guys are back. (I hope)
mitchg,
I'm giving this a try tonight but I'm adjusting some times 2 hours is crazy long for a PC, pulled pork is only 45 min., so I'm knocking this down to an hour for the meat, with a natural release (10 min or so) and then the veggies I'm only doing 5-6 min on, but that is partly because I'm using fingerling potatoes. At ten min you would probably want to leave the carrots whole so they don't turn to mush. And I will use a quick release on them. A good source for PC info is Hip Pressure Cooking. It's both a site and a book. Her times are quite good.
BTW 60 was plenty of time. Cut carrots were a bit mushy at 5 min. Potatoes were good. Next time will try the whole carrot thing and see if that makes things better. Taste was spot on so really just time adjustments.
Very happy to see new video content! Hopefully there is more on the way!
2 hours high pressure on the IP??? Why does this scare me? I'd like to make tonight in my Instant Pot, but am questioning the cook time and wondering if I should default to other IP pot roast cook times?
Thank you for the pressure cooker explanation- it tied a few concepts together for me.
Excited about all of the new video content! I’m going to give this a shot
Made today and the meat turned out incredible. The 10 minutes is too long for 1” diced potatoes. Super mushy.
Great feedback Scott. I'd rather undercook carrots than overcook them. Sometimes I'll cook them in the PC whole, wrapped in foil per Lorna Sass's technique, then microwave briefly if needed before cutting and adding back. Hip pressure cooking and Sass are my go to's on timing charts. I've found making my own notes invaluable too --- especially for PC times and sous vide ---so I can make future adjustments. I feel like a real idiot when I repeat the same problem.
I wish I had a pressure cooker as fancy as this one, but mine only has high or low settings. I assume that for 2 hours I would be using the low setting?
Where can I get a pressure cooker like that?
Just finished this for dinner! Really good. Some thoughts: My 28-gram package of gelatin had 32 grams in it, which was satisfying. I used stock concentrate (Kitchen Accomplice brand) instead of reducing stock myself. Added the equivalent of 8 cups (something like 85 grams) and enough water to get to 300 grams. I used the sodium to determine equivalency to Swanson’s, but I think I could have just gone with the package directions—the difference was only a few grams of concentrate, and the broth wasn’t too salty. I had a lot of extra liquid at the end, so I might also dial the water back. Also, I did 90 minutes in the Instant Pot (at way less than 2 bar!) and the meat was plenty tender, but that was with two two-pound pieces of chuck (all they had!). Did the searing steps in a separate pot, since the IP’s sauté function is pretty weak. The onions were enough to deglaze. Did the carrots and potatoes for 7 minutes and they were perfect—the IP is slow, so they were in there cooking for a while before the timer even started. I’ll definitely make this again.
My wife doesn't eat beef, but I'm determined to make a version of this with pork butt and probably chicken broth in the Instant Pot. How do you know the bar pressure of the IP? Did you cook on low or high?
Edit: A little internet research suggests the Instant Pot operates between about 11-15 psi (up to 1 bar). I'm now wondering if cooking for more than 2 hours on high might be necessary to get similar results.
I am extremely happy to see this return to posting really well thought out and informative content! Great set of videos and I hope to see more!
Love this kind of content. Great to see a return to deep dive recipes. Will be trying this one over the holidays.
http://www.kuhnrikonshop.com/product/duromatic-family-style-braiser
The instructions states that you should use of 2 bars of pressure. I think you mean cooking level 2, which translates to high pressure, which .8 bars of pressure. Most pressure cookers are limited to 1.2 bars of pressure.
2018 needed a Grant Lee Crilly "Ermagerrrd" something fierce. Just in time. Loving the new content.
This was one of the most delicious things I cooked in 2018 and will be a new cold weather staple.
Wife doesn't eat red meat, so I made a couple substitutions. I used pork shoulder/butt instead of beef and did a combination of vegetable and chicken broth. Reducing that took longer than expected - I definitely recommend a larger saucepan or stock pot for the greater surface area and faster reduction.
The Instant Pot does not achieve 2 bars, but 2 hours on high setting produced amazing results, visually comparable to what I saw in the video. Awesome final product.
I wonder if I could skip the first step and just use Campbell's Beef Consomme https://www.campbells.com/campbell-soup/condensed/beef-consomme/ . If were going to use A1 and Hidden Valley Ranch we might as well make it more convenient.
I don't own a pressure cooker, but I do own two Joules If I pre-sear (and don't mind soft vegetables) what time and temp settings can I use to replicate this recipe sous vide?
Nope. High setting. I made this last night, and I’m ashamed to say I doubted the 2-hour timing. I took it out after 1 hour and prodded it with a fork. It was cooked enough to eat, but it really needed the extra time.
I made this last night, and it was great. I didn't cook it for the full two hours at high pressure (I think perhaps when they said "2 bars", they might have been referring to the 2 bars that show on a Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker's pressure indicator, and not 2 bars of pressure). Two hours seemed awfully long. I took it out after one hour, and it was cooked, but still very solid. It didn't have the meltingly soft texture that Grant's did. I cooked the portion of the meat we didn't eat for dinner for about another half hour ... I think it really could have used the full 90+ minutes, and that's what I'll do next time. Of course, the time will vary with the size of the roast. A larger roast would take longer, a smaller one, less time.
I made this based on the video that appears on YouTube ... which doesn't show the full recipe. I only became a premium member today, and I was interested to see the use of gelatine in the reduced broth. I'm assuming the gelatine was added because it was store-bought stock, and perhaps lacked natural gelatine? I used my own home-made stock, which is pretty solidly gelled when it comes out of the fridge. I'm assuming that added gelatine wouldn't be needed in this case?
Re: the Ranch Dressing mix ... this is NOT available anywhere I looked in Toronto!! I remember the existence of dry dressing mixes when I was a kid (45 years ago) but they seem to have grown out of fashion here. I must have gone to or called 10 stores looking for it (including Walmart, ugh), but no luck. A bulk-food chain here in Canada had Ranch Dip mix, but as bad luck would have it, the local store was closed for inventory yesterday . I used an approximation of ranch dressing seasonings (dill, paprika, chives, parsley, garlic powder, onion powder), and it was pretty good. I'm hoping I can find the Real McCoy sometime, though, as it sounds like it is pretty good.
Consommé has flavourings (sherry? fake sherry?) that would be different from meat broth ... but they might work?
I cooked per the recipe, except I had only a 2-pound chuck roast, so I pressure-cooked the meat for only 1 hour on the higher of two settings on my Fissler pressure cooker. The roast was delicious. I will definitely make again, but next time will experiment with dialing back the A-1 sauce; its flavor was a little sweet and prominent in the liquid for my taste. Adding the celery and steaming at the end was a great idea. Really freshened things up. This was my first ChefSteps non-Joule recipe. I will be coming back for more recipes in the future.
Yep re: the gelatin - store bought stock usually doesn't have the collagen to get nice and thick like that. I've found beef broth concentrates work well if you can find them - just re-hydrate it up to get the right intensity, they usually have some stabilizer in them already.
1) You'd need to sous vide the vegetables separately (Chefsteps has great recipes for sous vide carrots and the potato/leek one would be great here) 2) You would need to sous vide the chuck roast for probably 24 hours after a heavy pre-sear.
Pork "as the other white meat" was a marketing effort from the Pork Board. Not trying to sway your wife (never a good recipe) but if her objection is on a nutrition basis, she might want to look at what a train wreck pork shoulder is, nutritionally. A delicious train wreck.
Sigh ...trust me, I’ve tried. Originally, I think she was just scarred by reading Fast Food Nation, about the conditions of factory farmed beef (I know, pigs have it even worse, arguably). At this point, she no longer likes the taste of beef - and she’s never liked lamb.
More for me.
You can always add more salt, but it's not so easy to take it back out again!
What model of pressure cooker is featured in this video?
Thanks Jason!!
Tried this recipe tonight. Really great. I used 1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch Powder (16 g) and that seemed like enough. The gelatin really sets in after the sauce cools (it was the first time I had used gelatin before). Overall, we really enjoyed this recipe. It will definitely go into the rotation. Thanks Chefsteps & Hidden Valley Ranch!
Kuhn Rikon Duromatic 5qt Pressure Braiser:
https://smile.amazon.com/Kuhn-Rikon-Duromatic-Pressure-Braiser/dp/B001A08V82/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=kuhn+rikon+pressure+braiser&qid=1554712320&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull#customerReviews
For what it's worth, I have the 12qt pressure cooker and it is an absolute hand-me-down workhouse. Not cheap, but worth every penny.
You wont have any luck sous viding the vegetables with the beef, except that they might add a bit of flavor. The vegetables need to be cooked at much higher temps (180F+) in order to break down the fiber and cook properly.
PLEASE do some more pressure cooker recipes!
Time turns sinew to gelatin.
When you use quick release you’re lowering the atmospheric pressure inside the pot. However, the contents are still at 240 to 250°F .... as a result, any liquid in the pot will boil violently until it’s temperature drops. Similarly, any moisture in the ingredients you are cooking will also boil violently and turn into superheated steam. With meat, this can cause it to almost blow apart. I have seen this with chicken and beef the few times I’ve used quick release for these foods ; the meat comes out looking frayed. (It doesn’t seem to happen with really well-cooked meats like pot roast. Maybe because it’s so soft that the internal moisture can escape without ripping it apart?) Same thing with potatoes ... they can disintegrate when you use quick release.
My general rule of thumb is to not use quick release for meat (unless it’s ground meat), or for vegetables cooked in large pieces. For things that are mainly liquid, quick release seems to work fine.
It sounds like a long time, I agree. But when I did it I found it really needed the longer time. I Tried taking it out after 60 minutes and it was really not as tender as it could’ve been.
