Wine-O Braised Beef with Tomatoes & Garlic

I bought a beef roast several weeks ago, but ran out of time before the use by date so I threw it in the freezer with no idea on how or when I was going to cook it! My typical roast recipe is a variation of that one, add celery and cooked a crock pot. I’ve made it so many times, that I was not really looking forward to it.

So I searched the internet high and low…. Well, not really, I searched the Smitten Kitchen blog and found THIS easy-peasy oven braised beef with tomatoes and garlic recipe! With only one dish to clean and 3 ingredients, I stopped my search immediately. I altered the recipe a bit, which brought the total number of ingredients up, per some of the recommendations at the bottom of the Smitten Kitchen recipe. Since my roast was frozen, I let it defrost in the fridge for 24hours. It wasn’t completely defrosted, so I added 30 additional minutes of baking.

Just as the roast was going into the oven!

Wine-O Braised Beef with Tomatoes & Garlic – Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:
2-3 lbs chuck, rump or other roast (I’m actually unsure what kind or the size of the roast I used because I threw away the packaging before I froze it, but I know it was not larger than 3lb)
glug red wine (or two, or three)
28oz can whole tomatoes
head of garlic, separated into cloves, unpeeled
1 teaspoon dried thyme
bay leaf
freshly ground salt & pepper

Method:

1. Pour yourself a glass of red wine!

2. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place roast in ovenproof baking dish with a lid.

3. Pour wine over roast, one, two or three glugs!

4. Lightly puree tomatoes, still in the can, with kitchen scissors. Who really wants to clean a food processor anyways? Pour those over the roast and gently stir to combine with the wine.

5. Sprinkle the garlic cloves around the roast. Add the bay leaf to the tomatoes and sprinkle the thyme, pepper and salt on the roast.

6. Pop it in the oven, covered for 3-4 hours!

As the Smitten Kitchen recipe states, trussing your meat is optional, but it does make for an ascetically pleasing final product. I did not bother with this. Well, I thought I didn’t bother! I discovered after roasting that the roast I purchased was trussed by the butcher.

Serve with rice and a salad or a vegetable on the side. I went with wild rice and a side of frozen peas.

Look at that COLOR! This makes fabulous leftovers as well!

There are additional serving suggestions on the Smitten Kitchen version of the recipe, too!

Happy Cooking! – Jenn