Italian Pot Roast

Christmas is behind us, but New Year's Eve is just around the corner! We can't turn off our entertaining mode just yet..

But if you're like me, by now the holiday marathon has gotten you pretty tired. You'll want to entertain with something easy and stress-free. This modern take on a pot roast is it! No, it's not your grandmother's pot roast (as lovely or as boring as it may have been.) Updated with some Italian flavors, it's sure to please your crowd. And you can serve it with ease on top of some mashed potatoes, or egg noodles, and a simple salad. Presto!
Happy New Year!

Serves 4-6

5-6 lb beef chuck roast (also could use bottom round roast or brisket)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

4-6 slices bacon, diced. (also could use pancetta, salt pork, or pork jowl)

2 onions, diced (white or yellow work fine)

2-4 carrots, diced 4 ribs of celery with leaves

diced 4-6 cloves of garlic, minced

3-4 TBS of tomato paste

2 Bay Leaves

2 Sprigs of Thyme

1 Sprig of Rosemary

2 cups of red wine (or sherry cooking wine)

Liberally season all sides of your roast with salt and pepper. Set aside. In a heavy bottomed dutch oven, start to heat your olive oil over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot, sear the roast until a crust forms, rotating it to all sides to create the crust all over. Once the roast is browned all over, remove from the pot, and set aside.

To the hot oil and rendered beef fat, add your bacon, and saute until crispy. To the crispy bacon add your diced onion, carrots and celery. Season with salt and pepper and saute until the vegetables have sweat and started to get tender. Once the vegetables have softened, add your garlic, and tomato paste. Stir the mixture around until the tomato paste has coated everything and coated the bottom of the pot, and allow the paste to cook and brown, stirring and spreading it back across the bottom of the pot to allow it to continue to cook. Do this process for several minutes, until it appears the tomato paste doesn't want to scrape up off the bottom of the pot anymore.

At this point, add your herbs, and then deglaze the pan with 2 cups of wine. Make sure to scrape up all the bits off the bottom of the pan, and reincorporate those bits of flavor back into the sauce. Place your roast back into the pot, and nestle it down into the sauce. It doesn't have to be covered by the sauce. Once the sauce has come up to a boil, put the lid on your dutch oven and place it on the middle rack of a preheated oven to 350 degrees. Cook for 2 hours.

After the two hours have elapsed, remove the dutch oven from the oven, and remove your roast and set aside. Fish out and remove your bay leaves and the remaining woody stems from your herbs. Remove 1/2 of your sauce mixture, and blend in a blender or food processor with about 1 cup of water, and return it back to the pot and stir. This has become your sauce or "gravy." Slice your roast against the grain, and return it to your pot of sauce until you are ready to serve.

Serve over creamy mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or rice.

Enjoy!