Pot Roast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Place a kettle over the fire.
Put a piece of suet as large as your hand into the kettle and let it render well; do not let it scorch.
Take out the crackling and put in two or three pounds of porterhouse roast.
Turn the roast often until it is nicely browned.
Cook and serve
Set the pot on top of the stove and cook slowly for three hours, adding one pint of water at a time as needed.
Keep the pot covered well.
One-half hour before serving, add a small onion chopped finely, or one large ripe tomato.
Season to taste.
Add flour to thicken the gravy a little.
Serve with one to one and one-half pints of gravy.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Porterhouse roast
- Browned on the outside and slowly cooked until tender in the covered pot.
- Suet
- Renders fat into the kettle to brown the roast and add richness.
- Water
- Adds moisture during the long covered cook so the meat does not dry out.
- Flour (in the method)
- Thickens the gravy as it cooks down with the meat juices.
- Large ripe tomato
- Adds acidity and flavor to the gravy during the final half hour.
The step that matters
Turn the roast often until it is nicely browned.. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, but the suet must not scorch or the drippings turn bitter and the gravy tastes burnt.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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