TENDER BONELESS BEEF CHUCK ROAST RECIPE

If you have close neighbors, expect them to come knocking when you start cooking this recipe.  The rich beefy aroma will permeate the neighborhood, which is one of the reasons that I love cooking so much.  I have an infatuation with the smells that come out of my kitchen.  Quick question: Have you ever walked outside your house for the sole purpose of coming back inside with clear senses to inhale the goodness you are creating?  I do it all the time.  Sometimes it happens to me by accident.  I'll head down to the basement for a minute and then come back into the kitchen to get blasted with wonderful smells.  For some reason it is impossible not to smile in that moment when the richness fills your lungs.

Well, be prepared for all of these things to happen when you create this boneless beef chuck roast recipe.  For some reason when beef and onions are cooked together, they release the most wonderful aromas.  My whole family begins congregating in the kitchen as the aroma intensifies.  It's what cooking is all about!

MEAL PREPARATION: BRAISING

You will find that the preparation is simple, taking only a couple minutes to prepare the dish to be braised.  Braising is simply the act of searing (or sautéing) food lightly and then cooking it in a closed pan with liquid.  You can braise veggies or meats with relative ease.  The most important part of braising is to ensure that there is a good seal when you have covered whatever you are braising.  Otherwise, the braising liquid will evaporate too quickly.

At the cooking school I ran, there were so many questions from students about braising.  Here's a couple of the most common:

1. Do you need to cover the meat with liquid?  Nope!  Immersing whatever you are cooking would make it more like boiling or stewing than braising.  We need to create a steamy environment, not one where we are boiling.
2.  If the meat isn't covered with liquid, how does it stay moist?  Well, it's not actually the liquid that keeps the meat from drying out.  It's the fat in the meat that adds moisture.  For this reason, when I am braising I will add more fat into lean dishes.  For example, with pork tenderloin (which is very lean), I will wrap it in caul fat or add additional fat to the pan to keep it from drying out during longer periods of cooking.
3. Braising takes forever.  Is it really practical?  As with anything, all good things take time.  Aside from that, it really depends on what we are braising.  Braised veggies like baby bok choy take about 4 minutes.  Larger cuts of meat such as a pork shoulder could take up to 8 hours.  Butter Braised Carrots with Thyme take about 20 minutes (including prep time) and will change your outlook on cooked carrots!
4. Can you pause a braise?  Yep.  There were lots of times in our professional kitchen when we wanted to "par cook" various cuts of meat.  All par cooking means is that the cooking process is stopped before something is fully cooked.  When you pause a braise, it is important to store the food safely before you finish the cooking process.  If you are just pausing for a couple hours, keep the temperature of the braise above 140 degrees.  If you are going to finish in a day or two, make sure the temperature gets below 40 degrees and into the fridge as quickly as possible.
5. You are making too much meat!  How do I scale down the recipe?  For most vegetables, the braising time is going to be consistent.  Take about the same time to cook 5 carrots as it does to make 50 carrots, depending on the size of pan you are using!  For meats, typically it is all about the end temperature you are working toward.  For pork butt, it is always 200 degrees.  The best bet is to temp the meat early in the process.  For example, if the recipe says that it will cook in the oven for 8 hours, check at 4 hours to see what temperature it is at. If you see that you are at 170 degrees, then you're not going to need another 4 hours of cook time.  You have averaged about 40+- degrees an hour.

QUICK COOKING TIP: For this recipe, we are not going to use any stock for the braising liquid.  Typically I would add in a beef stock when braising beef, but the gravy we are going to create is already going to be rich with flavor and fat.  Instead, we are going to deglaze the pan that we used to brown the beef before putting it in the oven.

Deglazing is just adding a cooler liquid to the pan and scraping up all the browned bits (fond) from the pan.  When you deglaze, it is important to be prepared before you start.  You can either have a small glass of water next to your stove or take your pan and pass it quickly under cold running water.  I like having a glass next to the stove because I can control how much I am adding more easily.  Typically no more than ½ a cup is needed.  When you have added the water, you take a spatula and scrape everything up. The water will be bubbling like crazy, so be careful!  After you have it all scraped up, pour it into your braising dish.

Ok.  That's was a lot about braising and deglazing.  Let's get into the meat of this boneless beef chuck roast recipe.