Classic Pot Roast

The nights are definitely getting colder here in the Napa Valley. We haven’t had much rain, so having the clear skies at night leads to colder evenings. We are a comfort food kind of family, and with my discovery of an InstantPot, it’s so much easier to create a warm meal during the week without having to simmer something on the stove all day (which I love doing as well). The classic pot roast has always been one of my favorites to make. Most of the ingredients are already in your pantry, so you aren’t having to go out and buy special items. One usually has carrots, potatoes, and onions available to use and with just a few additions, you can create this delicious meal within 2 hours.
This recipe calls for a cup of dry red wine, and I wanted to use our newly released Grenache as that wine. Grenache is a medium bodied red and gives this pot roast just a perfect kiss of wine flavor. This vintage of Grenache was sourced from the Runquist vineyard in the Sierra Foothills, in Eastern California.

Regarding the Instant Pot, if you do not have a pressure cooker as a part of your kitchen toolkit, I highly recommend getting one.  My parents used a pressure cooker when making meals back when I was growing up, but it was one of the old models, where when the pressure built up in the pot, that steam valve would whistle so violently, you thought the whole thing was going to blow!  It was a bit scary, but Mom always knew how to handle it.

I must admit, I had no idea how my new pressure cooker would work when I first purchased it.  When the recipe I was using called for me to “manually” release the pressure by moving the valve to vent, I was scared!  I learned quickly to place a towel over the valve before releasing the steam.  This helped me from getting burned, which can happen if you aren’t careful.  But don’t let this stop you from purchasing one.  I have found that using my Instant Pot creates a tastier meal than if I had let it simmer all day long on the stove or in a crock pot. Before I get to the recipe for this Classic Pot Roast, I wanted to let you in on a really cool app I found for planning meal menus.  It’s called RecipeBox.  What I love about this app, is even though you can create a calendar of meals, you can also copy & paste URLs of recipes you find, for an easy add to RecipeBox.  The major bonus is that it will create a shopping list for you of these meals when you add them to the calendar.  There is seriously no need to manually add a recipe unless of course it’s a family recipe.  I highly recommend downloading this app if you like to meal plan.