Oven Round Roast

This roast will forever be the Rachel Ray roast to me.  I was fortunate to get to visit her show on a recent trip to NYC and this was the recipe that she did.  I have always done chuck roasts in the crockpot and was very unfamiliar with other cuts used for roasts.  By the way, a chuck roast + cream of mushroom soup + carrots, onions, & potatoes in a crockpot for 8 hrs will probably always be my favorite roast beef dinner but I'm always game for trying something different.

I will say that a round roast is a more expensive cut of meat but it is much leaner than chuck and we ate 3 meals plus some on about a 3lb roast.  So you do get your money's worth out of it for sure!  This again is more of a technique than a recipe that I learned so you can change up the seasonings and veggies to your liking.  This produces a medium rare roast so if pink meat is not your thing, stick to chuck roast in the crockpot.  Like I said, it is a very lean roast so if it isn't pink it will be grey and dry out of the oven.  But you could cook your roast this way and then once it is sliced use it in recipes where you cook it a second time.  We sliced up our leftover meat, sauteed it with onions and created some awesome steak sandwiches.  Then what I still had leftover I cubed and created a great chili.  So the meat was cooked again and not tough at all.

Here is Rachel Ray's original recipe that includes a tomato gravy too.  It pretty much creates a gravy with the pan drippings plus some tomato paste.  She recommended serving it with gnocchi.  Gnocchi are potato dumplings, an Italian staple, and they are readily available in vacuum sealed pouches in the pasta aisle.  I like them and think they are a nice switch from the typical potato or rice side dish.  They are bland so you definitely have to top them with something.  Enjoy!

Oven Round Roast

3-4 lb round roast
olive oil
steak seasoning (I used the Montreal steak rub)
1 onion quartered
1c chopped carrots

The roast needs to be at room temp.  Preheat your oven to 500 or 550 if it will get that hot.  Rub the roast with the oil and cover with the seasoning.  In a roasting pan, create a bed of the onion quarters and carrots for the roast to sit on.  Place the roast in the oven for 30 mins.  Turn off the oven but DO NOT open the door for 2 hrs.  Slice and serve.