I'm heading up to the kitchen soon, to make a pot roast. I'm trying it in the Instant Pot for the first time today. That makes it quite a bit faster than my normal crock-pot method of cooking. We'll see how it comes out at dinner tonight.
This Instant Pot roast was the best ever! I cannot believe how tender it was. You look at it and falls apart into shreds. Amazing.
I think this result was mostly due to the Instant Pot. I didn't use a high end roast. I just picked up something that was on sale for half price - that turned out to be a 3lb Beef Cross-Rib Chuck Roast for $12.49 Seemed pretty cheap to me. I have no idea if this is a good cut of meat or not. Being cheap, I bought it because it was on sale. However, out of the Instant Pot it was absolutely wonderful. No knife needed for this stuff.
I cooked it as described below. I liked how it came out so much that I went back and typed in what I had done so I can repeat it in the future. My wife does not like heavily spiced food, so I went for more bland, but it came out fantastic if you ask me. A little pepper would have been good, but that kills my wife. The potatoes and carrots came out very mushy, but delicious. That's the way my wife likes them. The onion basically disappeared.
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Instant Pot Roast
3 lbs Beef Cross-Rib Chuck Roast
6-8 golden potatoes, each about racquetball size, quartered
1 cup mini carrots
Large onion
3-5 cloves garlic
1 package French Onion dry soup mix
Beef “Better Than Bouillon” concentrate
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Peanut oil, or whatever oil you prefer to brown meat with
Kosher salt
Cornstarch
Remove roast from refrigerator, liberally cover all sides with kosher salt, allow to sit on counter for one hour to warm to room temperature.
Cut onion into wedges. Quarter potatoes. Chop garlic. Mix 3 cups or hot water with “Better Than Bouillon” to make a broth. Vegetables will come out mushy, if something firmer is wanted, do not quarter the potatoes, and use larger carrots.
After roast has warmed, heat 1-1/2 tbsp of peanut oil in Instant Pot on saute setting. Cover all sides of roast with onion soup mix, then brown all sides, about 2-3 minutes per side. Remove roast and set aside.
Add garlic, onion, and carrots and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. There will be burned meat from the previous browning step and the garlic will stick into that, but that's OK. Remove this vegetable mix from Instant Pot and set aside.
Add broth and apple cider vinegar to Instant Pot and use wooden spoon to scrape off burned meat and vegetables from bottom of pot (be careful not to splash while scraping). This burnt stuff gets mixed in with the broth and adds good flavor. Hit “Cancel” to stop saute mode.
Add Roast. Add vegetables. Add potatoes. Most will probably be submerged in the broth, but if not, that’s OK.
Pressure cook at high pressure for 60 minutes (20 minutes per pound of meat).
After cooking, allow 10 minutes for pressure to partially release naturally. Then push controlled steam release button to finish depressurizing (about 5 minutes).
Remove roast and shred. Remove vegetables.
Turn Instant Pot back to saute to boil liquid for a few minutes.
Mix two tablespoons of cornstarch in ¼ water and stir to dissolve. Add to Instant Pot to thicken the boiling liquid. Continue boiling to gravy thickness you desire, adding a little more water/cornstarch mix if it is not thick enough.
Timings: 60 minutes to bring refrigerated meat to room temperature (prepare everything else while meat is warming). 10 minutes to brown meat. 5 minutes to saute vegetables. 15 minutes for Instant Pot to pressurize. 60 minutes to pressure cook. 15 minutes to depressurize. Total 2 hours 45 minutes.
. Well, that changes things, now its trying to catch cats that graduated SERE training (
