My Sister's Friend's Pot Roast Reworked

I can't take all the credit for my awesome pot roast, the recipe was taught to me years ago by a friend of a friend. I remember walking into her house for the first time and having my senses overwhelmed by the buttery smell coming from her kitchen. I never knew beef could smell like that. From the first bite I took I was hooked and never looked back. Over the years I tinkered and tweaked the recipe until it stands as written here today. Best. Pot roast. Ever.



The secret to perfect pot roast is time. Nothing more, nothing less. The secret to lustful pot roast is using beef stock instead of water.

5 or 6 pound blade chuck roast
3-4 thinly sliced onions
salt
pepper
1 1/2 C beef stock or water
1 head of garlic, peeled, cloves left whole
2 carrots per person, peeled and cut into chunks
2 potatoes per person, peeled and quartered
1 purple turnip per person, peeled and halved
as many extra onions as you would like, peeled and halved or quartered
You can really use any root vegetables you like and as much or as little as you would like.
2 +/- C beef stock
you may need additional water
1 bag of frozen peas-thawed**
1 box of crimini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
flour or other thickening agent

Preheat your oven to 400*

Put your roast and the onions in a large roasting pan. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until well browned about 1 -1 1/2 hours.

Take the pan from the oven and reduce the heat to 350*. Add enough stock or water to cover the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the garlic cloves all over the pan. Cover and cook for 2 hours. Check the roast at the hour mark as you may need to add more stock/water, you don't want the pan to dry out.

Remove pan from the oven, add your veggies (except peas), add enough stock to cover the veggies, replace the cover and cook another 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove from oven, add peas, recover and cook another 15 minutes.

When the cooking time is done I put all the veggies on a serving platter right along with the meat and cover with foil and proceed to make mushroom gravy using the pan drippings and extra beef stock (as needed) along with a little vermouth or red wine if I've got it kicking around.