Shake up your pot roast with sweet bell peppers and a savory tomatoey sauce! This Slow Cooker Peppered Pot Roast with Potatoes is a fabulous weeknight meal after a busy day!
September is a busy time of year for anyone in the agriculture business. The early days of autumn bring in a flurry of activity in fields and pastures everywhere. The wine industry is particularly busy with thousands of pounds of grapes all coming into peak ripeness as the journey to a new vintage of wine begins.
That’s where you can find our entire family for the next few weeks – wading through dew-soaked vineyards at the break of day, clipping clusters of wine-red grapes and crushing them into juice. We battle the heat and the yellow jackets and race the clock as we make sure that the wild yeast from the fields don’t start fermentation before we can get the more stable commercial yeasts to the freshly crushed must.
And after hours and hours baking in the sun, we must clean everything. The totes, bins, stainless steel equipment, floors and drains must be free from all stems, skins, seeds, and last vestiges of sticky juice before anyone can go home. They are very long days and they have been known to go on into the night and by the end of it all, everyone is hungry and no one wants to cook.
The slow cooker occupies a permanent spot on the counter during harvest season, right next to the number for the pizza place. Both get a pretty good workout during this time of year.
While we don’t utilize the slow cooker as often as some people, we have picked up a few tricks to making sure that dinner can turn out super delicious when letting the countertop appliances do all the cooking.
First, when it comes to meat, we only cook the big, fatty tough cuts; chuck roasts, pork butts, short ribs, etc.
Second, we like to cook the veggies in a foil packet separate from the meat. It perches on top of the roast and steams the veggies (like potatoes or carrots) while the rest of the dish cooks. This keeps the veggies from getting all mushy and gross. Nothing kills a meal like mealy potatoes and mushy carrots.
This peppered pot roast was inspired by a vintage recipe from the 70s. That recipe doused the meat in a sherry spiked gravy that, for some reason, had sugar in it.
I skipped the sweet sauce and turned this into more of a savory, tomato gravy full of sweet bell peppers. It’s a hardy, satisfying dish that is just what the doctor ordered after an exhausting day bringing in the harvest.
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 3-4 pound beef chuck roast
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- 3 large bell pepper cut into ¼ inch wide strips
- 1 large onion sliced
- ½ cup beef broth
- 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 pound small fingerling potatoes
- 1 Tablespoon butter
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
Instructions
- In a large, heavy skillet, heat the olive oil over high heat. Season each side of the chuck roast with the salt and pepper, then sear in the hot skillet for 3-5 minutes per side. In a large slow cooker, place the sliced onion on the bottom of the crock and then place the seared beef on top.
- In the same heavy skillet, add in the beef broth and scrape up any bits on the bottom of the pan. Stir in soy sauce and tomato paste and whisk together. Pour the sauce over the beef adding in a ½ cup of water.
- Wrap the potatoes, butter and ½ teaspoon of salt in an aluminum foil packet. Poke a few holes in the top and then nestle on top of the beef in the slow cooker. Place the lid on the slow cooker and cook on HIGH for 6 - 8 hours or until the meat is fork tender.
- In the still hot skillet, add the peppers to the pan, adding in a teaspoon of oil if needed. Cook for 5 minutes or just until peppers start to soften. Transfer to a dish and store in the refrigerator.
- To finish the dish, transfer potatoes and beef to a large platter. Pour the cooking juices into a saucepan and skim off any fat. Add in the peppers and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Whisk the cornstarch together with 1 tablespoon of cold water and pour into the sauce. Cook for 2 minutes until the sauce thickens. Pour the sauce over the beef and potatoes and serve!
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