Will pressure cooking ruin a pastured pot roast?

17 years ago

It's snowing heavily so I don't want to go to the store...hence I need to make dinner with what I have. I know the pressure cooker is great for cheap tough cuts of meat, but if it's grass fed, will the pressure cooker overcook it? Or doesn't it matter?

Also (this is my first pressure cooker roast), does the liquid need to completely cover the roast? Do I need to brown the meat first? The only thing I use my pressure cooker for is making stock or older beans, and I would just hate to screw up what could be such a lovely roast.

I wish I had thought of this earlier, could have thrown it in the slow cooker, but DH will be demanding dinner in a couple of hours so time is of the essence :-)

Thanks for any help you guys can give me...

Joanna

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Comments (7)

Terri_PacNW
17 years ago
I don't have a pressure cooker..so can't speak from experience...
But found this..Pot Roast and Lentils

and then I found this..From Kframe..

Here is a link that might be useful: Old CF thread
lindac
17 years ago
Cook it on top of the stove or in the oven....it will be a lot better.
Or eat oat meal for dinner and save the roast for another time.
That's way too nice a piece of meat to pulverize in a pressure cooker.
Linda C
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And brown rice in 18 minutes is a big time saver, IMO! I grew up with Mom's stewed beef cubes in gravy over rice, noodles or potatoes - yum! - talk about comfort food. In the past week I did pinto beans, rice, turkey chili, and a batch of food for the pooch in my Presto 4 qt. stainless PC. If I had the room for it, I might consider buying a second, larger pressure cooker. The 4 qt. is fine for my needs, but a larger one would allow me to cook for company too. Deanna, be sure to check your rubber seal around your PC if it has one. Make sure it is not dried out, cracked, or brittle. If it is, you may need a new one.
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Just came across this zombie thread. The mushroom soup Anita uses intrigued me. But one can has over half your daily sodium allowance, and MSG. Both of these probably make a very tasty roast. I think you could wing it with the ingredients of the soup, and use less salt and no additives. The ingredients I would keep match some of what earlier poster use: beef stock, water, mushrooms, tomato puree, flour, oil, a bit of wine, and then perhaps a little extra salt vs what you'd normally use (though I like to salt things to taste at the table - I find we use less salt overall that way.) My kids always like it when they go to dinner somewhere and campbell's soup has been used in the dish. It's all about the saltiness, I think. I think I'll put a chuck roast on the grocery list today. Yum.
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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.
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I stumbled on this thread looking for recommended time to pressure my duck stock and want to thank you all for your lovely insights. I usually make poultry stock by the five hour barely simmering method and get very clear, highly gelatinous stocks. I've not tried PC because I knew boiling stock makes it cloudy. Well, heck. I didn't need this duck stock to be clear so now was the time to experiment with my new PC. I see that some folks have gotten cloudy stock and some clear. Mine is rather cloudy and I notice the fat layer on top seems to be rather scummy. I think next try I'll bring the pot to a simmer and go through the skimming exercise before adding the veges and bringing up the pressure. I further wonder if keeping the temp as low as possible while maintaining pressure would help.
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Terri_PacNW
17 years ago
what cut of meat is it? How large?
dgkritch
17 years ago
The pressure cooker isn't going to change the cut of meat.

"Pastured" beef is going to have a significantly different flavor than grain-fed. IF they hired a mobile butcher to come to the farm and 'drop' the animal without disturbing it, that creates more tender meat. However, comparatively speaking, Chuck is still Chuck!

You don't say what kind of roast.

You can just about tenderize cardboard (or 3-yr.-old chickens) in a pressure cooker.... You will never cook a rare steak in there!

Sorry for the rambling, it's just a hard question to answer.

Another option (if it's a relatively lean cut), is to slice it into steaks that you can pan fry, grill or broil quickly.

Deanna
tradewind_64
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks for your replies, I very much appreciate it.

Terri, it's a round (bottom?) roast, I THINK about 2.5 - 3 pounds. BTW, pot roast with lentils sounds yummy! I've never heard of that before. A very nice change from potatoes I would expect. If I had some lentils I would try that tonight :-)

Linda, I hear you! That is what I am worried about. The trouble with buying lovely expensive meat is that every cooking opportunity stresses me, and I am much more fearful of failure. Hey, I wonder my hubby would do if he walked in and I announced "Oatmeal for dinner babe!" Hee!

Deanna, so the pastured beef does not need cooking differently, it just tastes different? Also, I can't really tell if it's lean...there's a slab of fat on one side but I don't really see any other visible fat.

I am going ahead with it, I guess. I will let you all know how it turns out. Why oh why don't I plan ahead better...

Joanna
Terri_PacNW
17 years ago
Joanna, go with Mike's post then...

I'd roast it in the oven to crisp up that "Fat" on the side...mmmmmm my favorite part...LOL

But it won't hurt it to pressure cook..and yes...grass fed, tastes a bit different than regular ol grocery store beef...and it will smell a bit grassy while cooking.
kframe19
17 years ago
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.

Will pressure cooking ruin a pastured pot roast?

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Terri_PacNW

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Will pressure cooking ruin a pastured pot roast?

Comments (7)

Terri_PacNW

lindac

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