A Kickass (and Bachelor-Friendly) Pot Roast Recipe

If there’s one thing all you bachelors need to know how to cook, it’s pot roast.

There are few better ways to get a healthy meal on your plate cheaply and effortlessly than by making this mighty dish.

Don’t know how to cook, you say? Have you ever even tried? That’s what I thought. Cooking a pot roast requires only the most basic of skills, and is a true test of your studliness. Think of it as “Bachelor Cooking 101,” and here’s your first assignment.

These Numbers Don’t Lie

As I’ve mentioned before, the “holy grail” of preparing healthy guy food is to do so in a way that doesn’t require a lot of:

1. Time
2. Energy
3. Money

In other words, cooking cheap (yet tasty) food in a way that doesn’t keep you in the kitchen all day. In a previous post, I bragged about cooking up what turned out to be more than a week’s worth of food in under 3 hours with less than $50 of food.

But I honestly think you could do that in under two hours, if you really wanted to.

I believe that pot roast is an even better contender than the roast chicken and roots when it comes to getting a massive amount of food ready with little money and time spent in the kitchen. I recently whipped up a simple pot roast and ended up putting the following into it:

• Money: $21.34
• Time: 19 minutes work (10 hours total with cooking unattended)
• Calories: 8,060

Here’s how I did it, and how you can easily replicate it yourself.

The Pot Roast–“Behind the Scenes”

Chicken tends to be cheaper than beef, which is why I used it in the previous challenge. But while I’d quickly get tired of eating nothing but chicken for the rest of my life, I could quite easily spend the rest of my days chowing down on different cuts of beef.

But ribs roasts are expensive. And those New York strips add up quickly. What’s a good, wholesome, red-meat-loving guy to do?

Easy: buy the tough cuts.

Chuck roast (my fave), round, and brisket all are traditionally the cuts of beef that went to the poor folks once all the rich people came and bought up all the really tender cuts that only need light cooking. This price disparity in beef cuts remains to this day as a result of continued relatively low demand for these tough roasts.

Use the cheaper prices to your advantage and swipe up some chuck roasts. The key to turning these chewy pieces of meat into melt-in-your-mouth-DAMN-THIS-IS-GOOD is by braising, which basically amounts to partially covering with liquid and boiling over a prolonged period. This slowly breaks down all the connective tissues leaving only the juiciest roast at the end. It’s like friggin’ magic.

The rest of the ingredients–potatoes, carrots, and onions–are cheap staples that you can find anywhere (even some gas stations will carry them) and are dirt cheap as well.

Equipment

There are two pieces of equipment you can make your pot roast in: a slow cooker and a large stock pot.

I would suggest using a slow cooker for the following reasons:

1. At $20 or so, a six quart slow cooker isn’t going to set you back much.
2. You can prep the night before, store the pot in the fridge, “set it and forget it” the next morning, and come home from work to a fresh meal ready for you! Never before has bachelorhood been so easy!
3. A slow cooker allows you to cook for insanely long times (8-12 hours) without needing you anywhere near the kitchen, which makes the meat as tender as a filet mignon.

That being said, if you are a true minimalist, a large stock pot will do in a pinch. You’ll just need to clear up a few hours you can be at home since you’ll need to leave the oven burner on. During this time, I like to do the laundry, pay my bills, and all the other bidness I gotta do around the apartment.

So, without further ado, here’s the blueprint to getting you 8,068 Calories of pure pot roast awesomeness for $21.34 of your money and 19 minutes of your time.

The Ingredients

• 4-5 lb chuck roast
• 2 lb potatoes
• 1 lb carrots
• 2 small (or 1 large) onion(s)
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 tablespoon dried
• 2 cups beef stock

The Recipe

1. Peel the potatoes. Peel the onions, cut off the ends, and slice in half. Peel and slice the carrots into big chunks. (The size doesn’t really matter. It’ll all be cooked by the end.)
2. Place the roast at the bottom of the slow cooker or stock pot. Cover with salt and pepper. Don’t be shy, really coat that baby.
3. Toss the veggies on top, along with the thyme.
4. Pour the stock over (it should only cover about half of the meat and vegetables).
5. For the slow cooker: cover and heat on low 8-12 hours. For the stock pot: bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for no less than three hours. (If you can do it for 8-12 hours, all the better.)

The Aftermath

After the roast is done cooking, taste the liquid to make sure you’ve added enough salt and pepper, and add more as needed.

At this point, you can fill up a few of those reusable plastic containers to store in your fridge, so you can just grab one to bring to work in the morning or to easily reheat when you get hungry. Or you could simply throw the whole pot in the fridge and spoon some out as you need it. You make the rules, man.

I know it sounds intimidating… BUT GIVE THIS A SHOT! Learning how to cook a few basic meals from memory is perhaps the biggest key towards losing fat and building muscle effortlessly, and this recipe is perfect for beginners. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Tagged as: bachelor cooking, braising, frugality, pot roast