Pot Roast Snowbound Style

Pot roast. Can be good, can be bad, and there seems to be a version of it in every meat-eating culture. Chuck roast is no cheaper these days than any other cut of meat (probably because so much of it is made into hamburger) but it's the cut of choice for pot roast. If you don't know much about braising meat, this is a fairly simple recipe that should give you good results.

I'm writing this recipe while snowbound -- outside a foot of snow sits on the ground on Cape Cod, substantially more on the other side of the Bridge. Pot roast struck me as being a perfect stuck-inside dinner, so I made some. This is not Yankee pot roast -- some of the ingredients are the same, but it probably has more in common with an Italian stracotto or a French boeuf bourgignon than it does any traditional American pot roast. The gravy is more or less a wine-and-roux deal, and the hybrid uses of olive oil and butter leave it with a rather ambiguous ethnic ancestry. But it's really good, and when the only thing to do is surf the Net or shovel snow, that's all that matters.

1 beef chuck roast, about 3-4 lbs/2 kg (preferably seven-bone)
2 ribs celery, sliced thin
2 carrots, diced
1 medium onion, sliced and quartered
2 cloves garlic, sliced or chopped
a favorite red wine
olive oil
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried rosemary or 1 sprig fresh
butter
kosher salt
2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp flour for roux

Preheat a Dutch oven just large enough to hold the chuck roast on medium high heat. Sprinkle the roast with salt, add a bit of olive oil, and sear on both sides; set aside. Melt some butter in the pan and turn down heat to medium; add vegetables and cook 5-10 minutes until tender. Return roast to pot and add wine sufficient to cover the meat about halfway. Add rosemary and bay leaves and cook over low heat for about 2-3 hours (or cook at 250F in the oven about 4 hours). When finished, remove bay leaves, make roux out of butter and flour and add to the gravy; mix in well and let stand over heat until gravy starts to thicken. Serve with gravy and vegetables on the side. (If you don't want your gravy to be too buttery or fatty, you can also thicken it by blending the vegetables in with a stick blender the way Alton Brown does.)

When serving this, don't feel constrained to potatoes -- I've served this with garlic-and-oil pasta. As for a beverage, go with comfort drinks -- an assertive red wine, a pint of Guinness, or even just some milk or hot chocolate. It's not a delicate dish -- pot roast never is -- so don't think you're doing it a favor by having something light and elegant with it.