Pot Roast

I made the most amazing pot roast. However, it was 70 degrees today and it was hard to stand in the kitchen next to the stove for this pot roast. I had tried beef with red wine and I had an extra bottle of beer so I wanted to use the beer. I also have a bottle of hard cider, but apparently most people don't use it with beef, they use it with pork! So guess who went to the store and got pork chops so I can use that bottle up...this girl! haha Anyway, back to the pot roast. Basically I went by this recipe Pot Roast Carbonnade but made a couple of changes because, although I love bacon, I don't like a really strong bacon flavoring. So this is what I used.

2 slices of bacon - 1 large onion, thinly sliced - 2 lbs of chuck roast, cut into 2 inch cubes - salt - fresh ground pepper - garlic powder - 2 stalks of celery thinly sliced - 1 TBSP of Olive Oil - 1 TBSP of butter - 1 1/2 TBSP of flour - 1 bottle of Stella, Beer (your favorite beer) - 2 bay leaves - couple sprigs of thyme - 1 can of chicken stock (I didn't have beef, lol) - 1 cup of water, add as needed - 4 carrots

I just made everything on the stove because I don't have a pot I could put in the oven. Cook the bacon until crispy, take out the bacon. Add the onion to the bacon grease and sweat the onion, add the celery in for just a couple minutes. Take out the onions and celery and set aside with bacon. Sprinkle the cubes of chuck roast with salt, pepper and garlic powder (I only used garlic powder on one side.) Sear the cubes on each side, I cooked these in batches. I added the olive oil and butter because I need it to sear the beef. Once the steak was finished I added the flour in for 1 minute, then added the onion, celery and bacon back in along with the 1 bottle of beer. Pour the beef back in, along with bay leaves, thyme, chicken stock, and a little bit of water. Stir. Add carrots in 30 minutes before eating. I kept this on the stove for about 2 hours and added a little bit of water here and there and stirred it every once in a while. I have to say I love the beer flavor better then the wine that I used. I will definitely be doing this again, but I'll probably add potatoes with the carrots.

Sorry for the camera phone picture. I can't wait to make this again. Hope you enjoy if you try it.