Laziness in the Kitchen...

No media coverage here!!

Ever on the outlook for a low work solution to the perennial weekday problem of “what’ll we cook tonight?” short of those dreaded (always in the oven) frozen creations or take out, a recent recipe caught our eye. It was in the February/March issue of “Cook’s Country”, a spinoff of Cook’s Illustrated. The magazine started off life as sort of a “down home” thing filled with homey crap like “Aunt Emily’s Corn Bread Muffins” gleaned from some housewife in Iowa, or the best recipe for Ambrosia, along with cooking tips like using a meat tenderizer to decorate your cookies. Apparently that didn’t last as now it’s pretty much a carbon copy of CI, sans the smarmy letter from Chris Kimball. The article was entitled: “Lazy Cook’s Pot Roast”



The article touted an easy way to a better roast than the traditional rub of dehydrated onion soup mix and wrapping in foil creating the traditional tough pot roast. Okay, let’s give it a try! Hey! -- we can be as lazy as anybody if needed. Wading through the recounting of multiple tries and failures she came up with the final recipe. Basically called for making a rub, then put the rubbed roast on a bed of vegetables, wrap tightly in foil, put in a 300 degree oven and walk away for four (!) hours. Okay, how hard can that be.. lazy stuff!

Okay, easy step one: Assemble ingredients for the rub. After rummaging around in our spice cabinet for a while we finally corralled the “few simple ingredients”.



I just know you have celery seeds, onion powder, and espresso powder in there somewhere. Measure, combine, mix, and get the "rub"...



Now get the meat, the root vegetables, and merely cut, chop, and create the bed for the roast to rest on..






We’re at about 45 minutes of laziness now…

Okay, now we’re ready to cut and tie up the meat, apply the rub, place it on the foil lined bed of vegetables.



Then tightly wrapping the package in foil “we need another piece here!”, and pop it in the oven.



So, after about an hour of lazy work, the thing is committed. Now’s the time to clean up.. more time gone.

After a nap or two, we finally unveiled the meat. It was fairly attractive, and served with some pan roasted potatoes.






Well, was it good? I guess we probably don’t have a good comparison, it was tender and fairly juicy, but we thought a little short on “beef” taste. I am not sure we’ll feel that lazy again. Start with a humble chuck-eye roast and 5 hours later you get a humble meal. Oh well, it was fun in the kitchen…which is always nice.

Oh, we used a Christmas gift bottle of Marietta Old Vine Red, a red zin. Nice and hearty paired with nice and hearty.

And, we did (lazily)

DFD