Slow Cooker Roast Recipe

Pot roast on the grill

Bored with burgers yet?

Maybe it’s the all-too-rapid approach of fall, or the cool breezes swept in by all our recent rain, but I’m craving heartier food from the grill these days.

Pot roast fits the bill.

A less-than-tender cut like chuck roast is usually cooked in a tightly-covered pot on the stove or in the oven until it’s falling apart-tender. But in their 1994 book “Smoke & Spice,” barbecue experts Cheryl and Bill Jamison offered a recipe for slow-cooking a chuck roast in a charcoal grill or smoker.

Pit Pot Roast, they called it.

First the meat is cooked for four hours in a covered grill with smoldering wood chips or chunks, so it soaks up plenty of smoky flavor and develops a rich brown crust.

Then the roast is placed on a sheet of foil and topped with the contents of a can of Ro-Tel (a mixture of tomatoes and green chilies). The foil is wrapped around the meat and the roast placed back on the grill, where it cooks for another three hours.

During this time, the liquid inside the foil creates steam that cooks the meat gently and keeps it moist. When it’s done, the meat is tender enough to pull apart with a fork.

We make Pit Pot Roast on our Big Green Egg ceramic cooker, but a charcoal grill or smoker will also work fine. Over time, we’ve altered the cooking technique a little, adding a drip pan that collects the juices from the beef (which are too good to waste) and later doubles as a roasting pan.

You can serve the roast whole, like a pot roast, with the juices from the pan and some bread or torillas. Or cook the meat hours or days before serving, then shred it and combine it with pan juices to make pulled beef.

The leftovers are so good, you might consider making two roasts instead of one. After all, you’re going to have the grill going for seven hours, so you might as well get as much food out of it as you can.

With traditional pot roast, making two at a time isn’t so easy.

But when the grill is your pot, you can cook enough for a crowd.

A Year of Slow Cooking: Slow Cooker Venison Roast Recipe

Cover and cook on low for 7 to 10 hours, or until meat has reached desired tenderness. The longer you cook it, the more tender it will become. If the center of the meat isn't as juicy as you'd like, cut the meat into a few pieces, then return to the pot to cook on low until it begins to break down. Dry meat isn't the sign of over-cooking, it's a sign of under-cooking. All Bambi jokes aside, this was quite delicious. Venison does not taste like beef or pork. It has a different flavor--many describe it as "gamey" which means that it has a different feel to the tongue, kind of tangy and more savory than sweet (beef and pork taste sweet when eaten right after). I liked it, and so did Adam and the baby (the big kids ate leftover mac and cheese (boxed, Trader Joe's)). I added the bacon and the butter to inject a bit of fat and moisture.  I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately on Netflix Streaming (we downgraded our cable package, but now have Streaming-- not sure we're actually saving any time or money--- gah.) related to food politics. When I think too much about where our food comes from, and why this or that is priced the way it is, and why this other thing costs so much more my head hurts.

That looks pretty good. I'm not a huge venison fan, but I have eaten it before. And I know it's not the "in" thing, but I kind of like seeing meat in plastic wrap on styrofoam trays. It weirds me out to know it came from my nephew's hog or the bison my sister and her husband raise. It doesn't stop me from eating it, but it's kind of mind over matter. Of course, eating plastic-wrapped meat is also mind over matter...

I love venison. I wish I had hunter friends. Maybe I need to suck it up and BECOME the hunter friend. Except I don't know the first thing about it. Love that if I get the opportunity to have a venison roast, now I'll have an idea of how to cook it! And I don't think having satisfaction of knowing where your meat comes from is a bad thing - I much prefer that than the mystery, CAFO-raised, often over-grown, over-sized, bland stuff from the grocery. (my husband would be calling me a meat snob for saying this, but honestly, he agrees with me too - mostly cause the grass-fed stuff or the game meats taste better!)

I just love your blog. I've been trying out recipes for a week and a half straight, getting rave reviews from my husband. (I am trying this slow-cooker thing in an effort to stay sane with a new baby and getting meals on the table each evening.) Thank You! I am gluten free too, and these recipes are life-savers. Our favorite is the BBQ pulled pork. Off to find a bean recipe.

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