instant pot beef pot roast
Animal pelts. Warm mead. Roaring fires. Blustery winds. Watching old Game of Thrones scenes shot in Winterfell is as close as I get to a real winter. And if Winterfell were a food, it’d be beef stew. I love beef stew. As a concept.
The problem with beef stew as an execution is that it takes four hours to truly become its best self, and by the time it’s FINALLY done to peak fall-apart-by-touching-it meat status you don’t want to look at, smell, or think about beef stew ever again. Which is part of why I broke down and bought an Instant Pot.
I used to get so sick of hearing about the Instant Pot from food writers. The second I saw a recipe was ONE OF THOSE recipes I would exit because a) I didn’t own one and b) I didn’t want to hear more about why I should own one. Part of this is because I am an enneagram 8 who hates being told what to do. The other part is because I despise slow cookers. Slow cookers are the Live Laugh Love of the food blogging world, a front of homey “cooking” when you’re really just warming it in a reformatted Easy Bake Oven. The results always taste brown.
Instant Pot, to me, was just a turbo slow cooker. But there was still the promise of a proper grandma beef pot roast braise in two hands-off hours. I figured I’ve spent 150 worse dollars.
It took me weeks to plug it in. Every time I looked at it, I saw the possibility of a bomb, ready to explode in a nuclear soup blast all over my kitchen. It took time to accept it as a controlled, safe device designed for midwesterners (me) who are skeptical of Modern Technology. It has nothing in common with the one my grandmother would babysit over the stove, adjusting the temperature in microscopic increments, trying to keep a braciole from blowing up her house.
I got over it. And got myself into a whole new world of beef stew possibilities. You can, too.
In about an hour and a half, you can do what would normally take close to five: fall-apart shredded beef studded with an Italian seasoning blend (rosemary, thyme, and garlic), melty carrots, pillowy soft potatoes that give themselves over to a thick, saucy broth. My dad, who will specifically request “not pot roast” when you ask him what he wants to eat for dinner, helped himself to two bowls of this while I was visiting. It is a gateway recipe that showed my mother what the Instant Pot was truly capable of. And it was what reaffirmed to me that my judgments aren’t always right—just most of the time.
It’s still a weekend project, don’t get me wrong. I’m not pulling beef stew out of my ass on a Tuesday. But for a cozy day in, all candles lit, wind against the windows, I dare you to beat it.
RECIPE
A meat-and-potatoes American classic that’s equally inspired by Game of Thrones, the Instant Pot transforms beef chuck into fall-apart tender beef pot roast in under two hours.
Effortful time: 30 minutes
Total time: 2 hours
Serves: 6-8 (6 here)
YOU NEED
3 pounds chuck roast, trimmed, cubed in 4” pieces — I sometimes ask Whole Foods to do this for me, it’s free!
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 lb baby potatoes
8 big boi carrots, sliced into 2” pieces
1 tsp. dried rosemary
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups beef broth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 tbsp. cornstarch
MAKE IT
Prep your beef. If you didn’t get your meat pre-trimmed and cut, start by doing that. 4” pieces were perfect for me, but size is relative; just don’t go too small. Salt and pepper them liberally.
Sear the beef. Heat your Instant Pot on Sauté-High. Add the 2 tbsp. oil and let heat along with the pot so it doesn’t splatter everywhere. When ripping hot, sear the chunks of beef, without letting any touch in the pot. I had to do this in three batches. A long pair of tongs helps—this gets splattery and the oil is very, very hot. Put the beef on a plate while you work.
Sauté the aromatics. When the last of the beef is done, lower the IP to Saute-Low and throw in your diced onion. Sauté these until transluscent; they’ll pick up a lot of brown from the beef.
Build the stew. Deglaze with 1/2 cup of red wine. Scrape up all the beefy bits. Here, it’s essential: not just for flavor, but because the IP will think anything still stuck on there is burning. It’s not, but this will help prevent a warning. If you don’t use wine, beef broth is fine.Add the beef back into the pot, along with the rest of the ingredients EXCEPT the cornstarch. We’re saving that til the end.
Cook the stew. Seal the pot and switch to Pressure-High. Set it for 1 hour, 10 minutes. Now’s a great time to clean the kitchen, watch an episode of prestige television, or have a glass of that wine you opened! Let the IP natural release for 20 minutes. After that, manually release the rest of the pressure.
Thicken the stew. In a small heatproof glass, add the 3 tbsp of cornstarch, and a ladle full of the hot beef liquids you just unsealed. Stir this to temper the mixture so that it’s smooth and lump free. Stir this into the stew until fully thickened and combined.