This recipe is quick, cheap, and fit for a King.
My wife came home with a roast that she got for a song at Smith's, and wanted me to cook it for dinner. She told me to do something with it.
Cool. I'm down. Let me see what else is in the bag.....Clorox wipes, cat food, crayons, fabric glue... "Uh, honey. What did you pick up for the roast.?" I ask. "Nothing, just do something with it." She reminds me. OK, to the fridge... Half gallon of milk, jelly, Pillsbury's cinnamon rolls, carrots, nutella, raspberry syrup.. Wait, carrots. Cool now we got something to start with. To the pantry... ah-hah, a bag of boiler onions, not much else that is helpful to a roast recipe, but I got carrots and onions. All I need now is some oil, salt, and pepper. Check. Let's commence.
This falls into the easy category of recipes, and you can even make this a slow cooker pot roast recipe, too. If you want to let it go all day, and break down to total tenderness, easy money. Slow cooker pot roast recipes are very popular, and this recipe will easily transform. Basically, I used a slow cooker for this, my dutch oven. I could easily have let this go all day under low heat just like an electric slow cooker.
I didn't have time to go low and slow, so I made a quick roast beef that came out like prime rib. I just cooked it at a higher temperature, and I had a perfect medium-rare roast beef in thirty minutes. Easy to do, and unbelievably inexpensive. It was pretty rare in the center, maybe five to ten minutes more if you don't like rare beef. I could have fed 4 adults easily, and because of the sale my wife found, this recipe cost less than twenty bucks to throw down. I am hoping this will show readers how you can throw down awesome inexpensive meals with a little bit of technique, and shopping savvy.
Read on to see the recipe with a full photo tutorial.
Preheat your oven to 325
Slow method: 200
These are the ingredients I used:
- 1 roast of beef, about 2 lbs
- 1 bag of boiler onions
- 1 small bag of carrots
- 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper
Cut off the ends, and throw them in a pot of hot water (not boiling) for about 3 minutes. Remove them from the water and let them cool to the touch and the skin will come right off. Keep the pot of hot water on the stove.
Now, prep your carrots. If you have small skinny carrots, simply peel them and cut off the stem end. Try to keep their carrot shape if you can. If you have bigger carrots, try to chop them into big, uniform pieces. The bigger the better. Drop the carrots into the hot water for 30 seconds to one minute. Just until you see them turn bright orange. Remove them quickly and set aside with the onions.
Heat up the oil on medium-high heat.
Season the beef with salt and pepper on all sides.
Sear the beef in the hot oil, for one minute, on each side. Remove from the heat, but keep the skillet or dutch oven on the heat.
If you're using the slow cooker method all you have to do now is throw everything in and turn it on. In a few hours, you'll have tender pot roast. If you want to achieve the same results with a dutch oven, follow the rest of the recipe, but change the oven temperature to 200 degrees and cook for 4-6 hours. For a medium rare roast beef, follow the recipe exactly as stated.
In the same oil you seared the beef in, saute the carrots and onions for one or two minutes.
Throw the beef right on top of the veggies.
Put the lid on tightly, and put in your preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.
Remove the dutch oven from the oven, and remove the roast beef.
Let the roast beef rest under a tent of aluminum foil for about 5-7 minutes.
Keep the vegetables covered tightly in the dutch oven while the beef rests.
To serve, slice thin pieces of the beef, and serve it over the vegetables with generous spoonfuls of the natural gravy that develops in the cooking process. A salad and some wine, maybe a little bread. Forget about it, you're money. This recipe is delicious and I only used salt and pepper for flavor. It's all about technique. Do try this roast beef recipe if you want a cheap meal that will satisfy any appetite.
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