Sometimes I like to change the cut of beef I get from my farmer just to try something a little different. I ordered the Mock Tender Roast and was pleasantly surprised to find that it has a very good taste. Braising it in a dutch oven with homemade beef stock tenderizes it and adds good nutrition to the gravy. I think you’ll like this cut of beef!
The meat is cut along what is called the chuck primal, which is the area of the animal that begins at the neck, includes the shoulder and ends at the fifth rib. It is also known as the chuck steak, chuck tender steak, or shoulder tender. It is a slightly different cut than a typical chuck roast with a different flavor.
If you are eating a lot of braised meats, this is a good one to try.
Mock Tender Roast
Ingredients
- 2 – 3 pound mock tender roast from a grassfed animal (these can be small so I sometimes use two) (where to buy fantastic grassfed meat)
- 1 large onion peeled and sliced
- 2 – 3 stalks celery sliced (organic if possible — this is high on the list of the dirty dozen)
- 3 – 4 carrots peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
- 4 cloves garlic sliced
- Bay leaf
- Sea salt (where to buy salt)
- Peppercorns (10)
- 2 cups beef stock or bone broth (how to make beef broth)
- 1 cup water
Equipment
- 5 – 6 quart dutch oven (where to buy a dutch oven)
- knives (where to buy high quality knives)
Instructions for the roast
- On top of the stove, heat the dutch oven to medium, melt some tallow or lard and gently brown all sides of the roast
- Remove the roast from the pot and hold it aside in a large bowl
- There should be plenty of fat in the pan — add all the vegetables except the garlic and saute until somewhat soft
- At the end, for a minute or two, add the garlic until fragrant
- Add the meat back in on top of the vegetables
- Add the beef stock, the water and the bay leaf and any other herbs you may like
- The liquid should immerse the meat more than half way
- Cover the dutch oven and put inside the stove at 275 degrees F for 1 1/2 hours
- After cooking, remove the pot from the oven
- Take the meat out of the pot, put it on a plate and let rest on the counter
- Slice with an electric knife when it has rested but is still warm (if you let it get cold it is very hard to slice)
Instructions for the gravy
- Remove all the meat from the dutch oven
- Put a strainer over a large pot
- Pour the gravy into the pot through the strainer
- Take about half the vegetables (I usually pick out the pepper corns and the celery and discard them) and put back in the pot
- Using an immersion blender, blend the vegetables with the liquid gravy
- This will thicken the gravy without using any starches or flours and it tastes great
- Put the vegetables that you saved, back into the gravy
- You now have a thick and savory gravy with vegetable pieces (you may want to add salt to the gravy or at the table)
- When refrigerated, this gravy will gel due to all the collagen and gelatin in the stock and the meat
- To reheat just put all the sliced meat in a large pot with the gravy and heat gently on a low temperature