Umami Rich Pot Roast with its own gravy.
That's right; this makes its own gravy.
This recipe is for using one lb of trimmed chuck roast. If you scale it up, just remember not to double or triple the Dehydrated Instant Onion soup amount. More like 1.5 generous TBSP for 2 lbs, etc.
Ingredients
1 lb well trimmed beef chuck roast
1 can low sodium condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 generous tablespoon of dehydrated onion soup mix (I use Lipton)
using the empty soup can, 1-1.5 cans of additional liquid of your choice (see below).
finely diced dehydrated shiitake mushrooms that have first been soaked as instructed below.
Instructions
Rehydrate the dried mushrooms, making mushroom tea, as follows:
Take a generous handful of dehydrated mushrooms and rinse well under running water, in case they came with the inevitable small amount of sand.
Bring 1-1.5 cups of water to a low boil, remove from heat.
Add the rinsed mushrooms and stir.
Let this steep for about an hour.
Remove the mushrooms and chop or dice them. (I use a small food processor.)
In a slow cooker of oven proof pan/casserole with a tight cover, place the mushroom soup, the finely diced mushrooms, and the onion soup mix.
Thoroughly stir in 1-1.5 cups of liquid consisting of any combination of 2 or 3 of these:
water
red wine
the liquid "tea" from the mushrooms
Place the meat into this mix and spoon some of it over the meat.
For slow cooker, start with 1 hour on high, then 6 hours on low.
For oven set the oven to 250. Check it periodically to see if it is boiling and lower the oven temp to 225. The oven method will take 7-8 hours)
The meat should be fork tender when done. Remove it and tear of slice it into serving size pieces.
Serve with steamed carrots and your choice of starch. I use mashed potatoes.
MY NOTES
When stored, carrots convert sme of their starch to sugar. Therefore, if you have fresh-from-the-garden carrots, they will taste much sweeter if you store them in a cool dark refrigerated space for at least 2 weeks. .
If you greatly prefer to have the carrots simmer in the pot, go for it. Just use largish chunks so that the carrots do not overcook.
Choice of liquids to add:
I favor half red wine and half "mushroom tea." The reason to include that tea follows.
UMAMI The desiccated shiitake mushrooms undergo a chemical transformation that permits you to bring forth a pungent umami flavoring by soaking them as directed. What follows is a quote from a recent Washington Post article, by a biochemist, explaining this in terms that any lab tech would love:
"Dried shiitake adds a very important umami or savoriness by contributing two molecules: glutamate and a nucleotide called GMP that’s present in the cells’ RNA. In fresh shiitake, these two substances are present in very low amounts, but during drying, the glutamate is concentrated and GMP is released through an enzyme reaction. The two molecules amplify each other’s umami. To extract the most flavor, I first prepare a “mushroom tea,” steeping chopped dried shiitakes in water..."
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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2020 01:56PM by walesmaven.