Braised beef roast with root vegetables

[laughingrat]

Freely adapted from a recipe in the October Cooking Light. A nice slow-cooked beef roast with veggies; turns out flavorful. Could be done in a crockpot as long as you're willing to dirty a skillet or something in order to brown the meat first.


Ingredients

1 strip bacon
1 pound boneless chuck roast
3 T all-purpose flour
kosher salt
black pepper
1/2 t dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 dash powdered marjoram (or 1/4 t dried marjoram)
1 C red wine (I used an inexpensive cabernet)
1.5 C beef broth
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium-sized turnip, peeled and cut into chunks
1 medium-sized rutabaga, ditto
3-4 carrots, ditto
1 small potato, ditto
1 medium-sized red onion, cut into larger chunks

Preheat oven to 300 F.

In a Dutch oven, fry bacon until the fat has all run off. Remove bacon from the pan and set aside (to eat, naturally :)). Keep the fat warm at medium-high or so.

Sprinkle chuck roast all over with salt and pepper. Put flour in a shallow dish and dredge roast thoroughly. Brown on all sides in the Dutch oven (takes about ten minutes). Add broth, wine, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, and garlic; bring to a boil, then cover and bake at 300 F for 90 minutes. [Note on liquid quantity: more than the specific measurements, you want the liquid to be at least halfway up the side of the roast. If you need to add more liquid, do so. You could just add more broth, or keep the wine/broth proportions. Both would be tasty.]

Add carrots; cook another 20 minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables; you will probably need to add more salt and pepper at this point to make sure the vegetables are adequately seasoned. Don't oversalt; you can tweak the seasoning near the end once the vegetables have mostly cooked. Cover again and cook 90 more minutes or until vegetables are tender; adjust salt and pepper accordingly if necessary.

Discard bay leaf. Serves four, heartily.