Man’s quest to kill beasts and consume their high quality protein is an ancient desire. I assume at one point men hunted meat; chased these four-legged beast and killed them with their bare hands or primitive tools. Oh the drama inherent to the life of primitive man! But alas, life in the 21st century is much different. I go to the gym to simulate running after a large mammal, use machines to simulate throwing a spear at the beast, and do bicep curls to intimidate the beast with my awesome guns.

After I finish my routine at the gym, I shower off so I don’t offend people with my man stink and go to the grocery store. It is there that I kill… er… purchase large chunks of meat, pre-butchered and pre-packaged. Three and a half pound top round beef pot roast, I have conquered/purchased you! You will be in my belly soon! But cooking you takes way too long, and I basically want to eat your raw flesh now. What should I do?

Pressure cooker, you have the solution for me again! You can cook my cooking time down by a factor of like 4 and have me eating my big ass chunk of meat within about an hour.

So without further ado, read on for a kick ass pressure cooker recipe for Beef Pot Roast. I am sure that this would work well for non-pressure cookers, just add about 3 hours or more to the cooking time.

First, brown your meat in the pot, add:

1.5 tbsp Bacon Fat (or cooking oil or some sort)

3.5 lbs Top Round Beef Pot Roast

Salt and ground pepper liberally applied to the perimeter of the meat

Let the meat brown on all sides – this will take a little while, maybe a few minutes per side. Move the meat around to get a nice seal of cookedness on all sides. When the meat has browned, remove the meat from the pot and put it on a plate to the side for just a minute. You should have a little bit of brown meat residue in the pot that you are going to want to deglaze. To do that, add:

10 oz. water

Let that boil for a hot minute and you should start to see all that brown stuff start to disintegrate and dissolve in the water. When it has started to loosen and the pot is starting to look like it has lots of brown broth in it, add:

Your big chunk of brown meat that you removed from the heat just a minute ago

5 red potatoes, cut into bite size pieces

3 carrots, cut into bite sized pieces

1 yellow onion, roughly chopped (this is going to disintegrate anyway, so who cares how you chop it?)

4 cloves of garlic, minced

10 oz. of red wine

2 tbsp Salt

Ground Pepper

1 whole Chipotle pepper (this makes the dish kind of spicy, if you want it a little milder use half or less of the Chipotle)

2 tsp dried tarragon

1 tsp dried basil

And that is it! Look down at the pot and everything should look like a delicious mess. The liquid in the pot should basically be covering the meat, but it doesn’t need to cover it all the way. The meat will shrink in the cooking process and release all sorts of good juices that you are going to love. If the liquid doesn’t quite come up to about the 2/3rd level on the meat, add a little more water or wine to bring it up to snuff.

Close the lid and cook at pressure for 45 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the pot cool down naturally. When you open it you should have an awesome pot roast that is basically sitting in an awesome beef stew. Give it all a taste and add some more salt and pepper if you feel as though it needs it.

Remove the meat from the stew and place it on a cutting board (this will be juicy, be careful!). The meat should be tender enough to basically rip apart, so a couple forks or something like that should be good for getting it all apart.

Serve with a few hunks of meat with some rice and potatoes and carrots from the stew. Drizzle some of those stew juices all over the whole thing and maybe add a little green onion or something for color and you are good to go.

This protein packed meal is good enough for any hunter-warrior that this world has to offer. Simple meat cooked until it is super tender. The Potatoes should be awesome and have a buttery taste because they have absorbed a lot of fat and flavor from the meat. While you may not have killed the beast yourself, you did cook it, and in this day and age that counts for something… right?