Home Cooking Saturday - Chuck Roast

Today's home cooked meal is chuck roast.  This is an easy, hands free, and delicious meal.  When I was a young wife the only method of preparation I knew was to cook it in a crock-pot.  That method was fine if I started the roast early in the morning, but if I got a late start then I was out of luck.  The crock-pot has many advantages but speed is not one of them.  The latest method I've come to prefer is to prepare it in the oven.  I know this isn't new in any way, and I knew it could be done this way int he past, but it was always scary "real cooking" to me.  The crock-pot is kinda like microwave cooking.  Just put it in, flip a switch, and your done.  If that's all the more daring you'd like to be... well you can figure that one out on your own.  Here's the super-mega-skeery-real-cooking method:

Line a baking dish with aluminum foil.  Place the meat in the center and toss your roughly chopped sidekick ingredients around it, which in this case are potatoes, carrots, and onions.  Cover generously with salt, pepper, and minced garlic.

 

Loosely fold the foil over so the top is covered kind of like a tent.  This is so all the good moisture and flavors will be somewhat sealed in and won't just evaporate.

Toss it into the oven and bake at 350 for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until the internal temperature reaches 165.  If you're a gravy family, remove the meat and vegetables and place it on a serving plate, then just use the remaining liquid to make your gravy.  The gravy can be made a number of ways.  The easiest way I've found is to pour the liquid into a small sauce pan and add about 2 teaspoons of flour or cornstarch and whisk it over medium heat until it thickens.  Depending on how much liquid you had, you may want to add a small amount of milk which will add to the creaminess of the gravy as well as increasing the overall amount of gravy you'll make.  If you feel like you need it, add the milk before you add the flour or starch. 

When it's all finished, this is what you'll end up with:

In my opinion it's just as good as the crock pot method and takes a fraction of the time.