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Would this be a good pressure cooker roast?

15 years ago

It's a "beef chuck top blade roast." (boneless)

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Comments (5)

dgkritch
15 years ago
Yes, I think any "chuck" roast is a good candidate for pressure cooker.

Deanna
socks
Original Author
15 years ago
That's what I thought but not sure. Thanks Deanna.
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OK, I'm not an expert on glass cooktops. There have been lots of threads on that topic and many, many threads on the pros and cons of pressure canner brands. Your best bet on searching for them might be to use Google rather than the search engine here, but either way you'll find plenty. Today the easiest range or cooktop for canning is gas. Second might be an older-style electric range (not a smoothtop) that you can buy a canning element for. Now, let's discuss that "anchor" and the Wisconsin canner. I have a Presto, a Wisconsin and a small Mirro, so I can speak to the merits of each one. First, if you put a Wisconsin canner on the glass cooktop, believe me, it isn't going to damage the canner. That canner is so sturdy nothing short of a bomb is likely to hurt it. I do know people have had difficulty using canners on glass cooktops (and other electric cooktops) because the heat cycles on and off on the newer stoves and they've had difficulty maintaining a consistent pressure. But it varies from company to company, so it might be a good idea to call your cooktop manufacturer's helpline to see what they recommend re canning. Sometimes what they say is a bit different than what's in the manual. Some people get around the problem by doing the prep inside but canning on a propane burner (think turkey fryer) outside. A lot of what you buy depends on your finances. WAF canners are the Rolls-Royce of pressure canners. They are excellent no doubt, but it's getting challenging to find one at a good price. A Presto or Mirro, especially on sale, will be about 1/3 the price. That's a lot of gaskets. I don't see the gasket as a deal-breaker. If you maintain the gasket and store the canner properly, you won't need to replace it often. I don't know the current price of a gasket, but here in my small town True-Value Hardware carries all the Presto parts and if they didn't Ace Hardware does, or I could order them online and pick them up at my local Ace without paying shipping. Now when I need a plug for my WAF canner, that's the one that costs me because there's no place local I can buy it. Each person has to decide based on preferences and finances. If I were an occasional pressure-canner then I would think long and hard about the time it would take me to amortize the WAF one, though you might get lucky and find a great buy garage-sale scouting. If I did a lot of canning and/or had a large family I'd look at the WAF. Either way, with all of these canners, properly maintained, your children and grandchildren can be using them years down the road. Right now two of my nieces are using their grandmother's WWII-1950's Presto and All-American canners with no problems at all. Carol
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"Pressure canners come deep enough for one layer of quart or smaller size jars, or deep enough for two layers of pint or smaller size jars. The USDA recommends that a canner be large enough to hold at least 4 quart jars to be considered a pressure canner for its published processes. " If you go to the Presto site, nowdays you will see they only list the larger size as canners. They have 18 quart and 23 quart. Anything smaller is under cookers. http://www.gopresto.com/products/products_search.php?search_value=58&operation=Search&search_type=category Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation
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I have all three as well. PC's are excellent timesavers--steamed artichokes in 12-14 minutes instead of 45. Excellent for quickly tenderizing cuts of meat. (Great curry dishes in 20 minutes.) And sometime this week I'm gonna make corned beef & cabbage in just a little more than an hour. And I find that I prefer osso buco made in the PC to the non-PC way. Also, with a PC I can make foolproof risotto with hardly any effort and very little time, so I end up making risotto more often. (Indeed, Kuhn Rikon markets a small PC as a 'risotto maker'.) Dutch ovens are great for unfussy cooking; starting something on the stovetop and then finishing them in a slow oven is their forte. If you like this technique, take a look at Molly Stevens' All About Braising. Great resource. I have found that since I got into PC cooking I don't use my slow cooker as much. Slow cookers are great for stews, chili, beans and other things where the timing isn't critical--but the pressure cooker is very good on beans and grains as well, in about a third the time. If you want to work more grains and beans into your menus, a pressure cooker really is worthwhile. Lorna Sass, the pressure cooker expert, has written a pressure cooker cookbook precisely aimed at vegetarians. (See the link.) If I had to give up any one of those gadgets, it would be the slow cooker. I definitely wouldn't give up my PC, and I really like the enameled cast iron Dutch ovens as well. Here is a link that might be useful: vegetarian pressure cooker cookbook
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OK, bottom round is a good candidate for pressure cooking. Yes, brown your meat before dropping it in the pressure cooker with enough broth to come about halfway to 3/4ths of the way up the side of the meat. That way you get lots of good gravy. Pastured meat eats a different diet. However, the diet doesn't have much of an effect on what truly makes meat tender or tough -- connective tissue. Connective tissue is a function of how much work a particular muscle does. The more work it does, the more connective tissue it has. That's why the tenderloins are so darned tender, they do almost no work, and are almost completely devoid of connective tissue. Unfortunately, the amount of work a muscle does also helps with flavor development. Tenderloins and other ultra tender cuts of meat often have very subtle beef flavors, and it's not uncommon for them to have virtually no beef flavor at all. A chuck roast, a bottom round roast, or a skirt steak? Tons of fat and connective tissue, and normally incredible flavor.
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teresa_nc7
15 years ago
Agree! I've been looking for a chuck roast - on sale!- for weeks. Food Lion had them last week, but when I got there Friday after work....they were sold out. Bummmer.........
arley_gw
15 years ago
Yup, chucks in general have enough fat for good flavor. If you have room in the freezer, you can make up mirepoix (that's a high-falutin' word for 2 parts onion, 1 part celery and 1 part carrot, finely chopped) and freeze it in quart (4 cup) ziplock bags. I often will break out the food processor, chop up enormous amounts of mirepoix, and have it on hand in the freezer for various dishes.

The nice thing about this recipe is that if the mirepoix is already made and in the freezer, the actual cooking is only about ten minutes of time to get it ready, then you HAVE to wait for 45 minutes or so with nothing to do. Relax, have a glass of wine and let the PC do its thing.

Pressure-Cooked Chuck Pot Roast

Chuck roast, 3 to 4 pounds
4 cups mirepoix (if not previously made and frozen as described above, you need roughly 2 cups onions, 1 cups carrots and 1 cup celery, all finely chopped)
Chicken broth
1 large cup of mushroom stems & pieces (optional)
Black pepper

In the pressure cooker, put a 4 cup block of frozen mirepoix. Add about a cup of chicken broth. Attach the pressure lid and bring up to pressure for a few minutes. While you're doing that, trim excess fat off the outside of the chuck roast, but don't be too aggressive--you want to leave some for flavor. If you want to, sear the chuck roast on high heat in a frying pan (that's optional--it'll still taste good if you don't do that).

Reduce the pressure quickly and open the pressure cooker. Mix in the can of mushrooms into the now-thawed mirepoix. Scoop out roughly half of the mix and reserve. Give a generous grinding of black pepper to what remains in the cooker. Put in the pot roast. It's okay if it comes up the side of the cooker a little bit. Grind some more black pepper on the top of the roast, then put in the rest of the mirepoix/mushroom mixture on top of the roast. Reattach the pressure lid and bring the cooker up to pressure on high heat. Once it gets to pressure, cut back the heat to where it's just keeping the pressure on high.

Now, don't do anything for a while. After some time (roughly 45 minutes for a 3 pound chuck roast, 50 or 55 minutes for a 4 pounder), turn off the heat. Don't vent the pressure, but rather allow the pressure to come down by itself. It'll probably take at least 15 minutes to do so. During this time, you might want to make a batch of rice or couscous to catch the juices.

Once the pressure is down, remove the lid. Remove the roast to a platter. The juices in the pot will be delicious with no other treatment, but if you wanted to get fancy and strain them you could. Slice the pot roast and serve with rice and the pot juices.
arkansas girl
15 years ago
Chuck is the best choice for a crock pot/slow cooker too.

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