Beef pot roast

In the year 2000 I was living with my 20 year old son in Thornlie, and relatively new to coming home to cook each night, to say we had some interesting meals would be an understatement, but at the same time we had some humdingers too!

One such meal was beef pot roast, the first time I tried this I arrived home with a piece of beef and no idea how to cook it, so as I often did I rang my Mum and asked how do you cook pot roast, after her explanation I set about cooking my first pot roast, but couldn’t help thinking it sounded a bit plane Jane.  To jazz it up a bit I decided to put some onions into the pot, then some capsicum and then celery, a drop of wine and a pinch of this and a pinch off that.  That was ten years ago now, my son turns 30 in a couple of weeks, my doesn’t time fly when you are having fun!

Tonight I decided to try and recreate that tasty meal, and I have come pretty close to it, if my memory serves me well, I know I have done a few things different, but then who can remember exactly what I did 10 years ago when nothing was written down, there wasn’t time it was all we could do to get a meal on the table, eaten and cleaned up before bed time!

The first thing different tonight was the cut of meat, a 750 gram Virginia Roast, it was labelled and it was completely fatless, now I know fat is not good for you, but it does carry a lot of flavour!  The next major difference was the use of red wine, something never thought of back in Thornlie, didn’t quite make the shopping list due to budget constraints!  The last thing I can remember that I did differently, was not thickening the pan juices tonight, but rather had them just as they came out of the pot.
The overall result was great, very tender meat, in some very tasty juices, even the slightly burnt roast potato and sweet potatoes couldn't detract from what turned out to be a great meal, very yummy, not much room for apple pie tonight, best have a smallish slice.