Roast and Carrots with Mashed Potatoes

Good old fashioned Roast and Carrots with Mashed Potatoes!

Step 1: Ingredients

A roast. There are a wide variety of cuts of roast you can get. I used a bottom roast because it was on sale and the cheapest. Honestly? The best roast you can get for this particular type of recipe is a 7 point roast with the longest bone you can find.
A medium yellow onion
Carrots
Salt
Black Pepper
Rosemary
Thyme
Balsamic Vinegar

Go ahead and peel and chop the onion and garlic. Rub down the outside of your meat with salt.

Step 2: Sear It!

Heat a frying pan on medium high to high. You want it hot! Put your roast in and let it sear on that side for 2 minutes, then flip it and sear the other side for 3 minutes:

Then set the roast aside for later.

Step 3: Onions and Garlic

Add about 2 teaspoons of olive oil, turn the heat down to medium low and toss in your onions and garlic. Stir those around and saute them until they're translucent, then:

Step 4: Add Stuff

Add 2 cups of chicken stock and 1/3 cup of balsamic vinegar, then stir it around. Be sure to get all of the brown crunchies off the bottom of the pan. Toss in rosemary, thyme and black pepper to taste, then let it simmer until about 1/3 of the liquid reduces off.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Step 5: Putting it all together part 1

Toss in your carrots, then add half of the stuff from the frying pan to the pot.

Step 6: Putting it all together part 2

Place the roast on top of the carrots, then pour the remainder of the stuff from the frying pan on top. Cover it and put it in the oven for 3.5 hours.

Step 7: Done cooking

After you take the pot out of the oven, let it rest for 30 minutes before taking the roast out to carve it.

Step 8: Carve it

Now, I didn't take any pictures of this next bit because I completely forgot to. Scoop the carrots out of the liquid left in the pot and set them aside. There's going to be a lot of liquid left in the pot, so why not make an au jus?

All you have to do is bring the leftover juices to a boil, lightly sprinkle in a tablespoon of corn starch and mix that in really well, then sprinkle in salt and pepper to taste. Use a fine mesh strainer when pouring the au jus from the pot in to a bowl to strain out all of the floaty bits of rosemary or onion or whatever.

aaand here we have it, Roast with Mashed Potatoes and Carrots:

 

As a final note, one of the best ways to keep the leftover roast is to put it right in the au jus: