looking down into a roast dish, with beef insidePhotography by Aaron Patton
 

This assemble-and-forget recipe (featured in "A Reimagined Roast Straight from the Ranch"), an Eck family favorite, goes in the slow cooker early in the morning and is ready in the evening. Instead of serving pot roast the traditional way with potatoes and carrots, the Ecks use it for roast beef sandwiches, burritos, quesadillas, shepherd’s pie and beef and noodles.

In addition to creating flavor-packed morsels of beef, many of the recipe’s ingredients help tenderize the roast. Low and slow cooking also helps tenderize of this less-tender cut of beef.

 

INGREDIENTS

  •        3 to 3½ pounds Eck beef roast (Pike’s Peak or heel of the round, chuck, arm, rump, etc.)
  •        2 teaspoons kosher salt (approx.), as needed to liberally rub roast
  •        1 teaspoon (approx.) black pepper, as needed to liberally rub roast
  •        2 tablespoons (approx.) seasoning of choice, as needed to liberally rub roast (Traeger’s Beef Rub, Kinder’s Steak Blend, or Daddy Hinkle’s)
  •        2–3 tablespoons olive oil, or enough to coat the bottom of pan
  •        1 medium sweet onion, sliced into wedges
  •        1 tablespoon minced garlic
  •        1½ cups boiling water
  •        1 tablespoon Better Than Bouillon’s Roasted Beef Bouillon
  •        ¼ cup soy sauce
  •        ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
  •        ¼ cup hoisin sauce
  •        1 tablespoon cornstarch + 1 tablespoon cold water

 

Instructions:

  1. Liberally cover both sides of roast with salt, pepper, and your favorite seasonings.
  2. Heat olive oil in a skillet on medium-high heat. Add roast and sear until browned on all sides, approximately 2–3 minutes per side. This adds a nice bark to your roast and imparts a rich flavor into the meat.
  3. Place roast in slow cooker. Add sweet onion and minced garlic.
  4. Mix boiling water, beef base, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and hoisin sauce. Pour over the roast.
  5. Cook on low 6–8 hours.
  6. Remove meat from crockpot, trim fat, and shred. Reserve cooking liquid.
  7. Make thickening sauce. Mix cornstarch into cold water. Mix into 1 cup of reserved cooking liquid (for thicker sauce, use 2 tablespoons cornstarch.) Add any desired additional seasonings.
  8. Return shredded meat, thickening sauce, and remaining cooking liquid to crockpot. Let sauce thicken (use low or warm setting) for 30 to 45 minutes.

 

Yield: Bone-in beef pot roasts yield approximately 2 to 2½ three-ounce servings of cooked, trimmed beef per pound