Hey there, folks! It’s been hot. Like, really, non-stop heat index well north of 100 deg F hot. Too hot to do much other than hang out in air conditioning as much as possible. So as a result, I’ve been indoors too much! Now that it is August (classically cool, August…), temperatures have dropped significantly, and so I took the opportunity to cook dinner for the family in a dutch oven, in a fire pit, on my deck.

I’m keeping it simple. My wife and I have a subscription this summer with one of the local farms, where every Friday we can go out and pick up a large box of vegetables, plus our choice of some of the less popular items (like tomatillos and eggplant). It’s been great, but it has also been a LOT. We’ve done an admirable job of keeping up with the quantity, but veggies have accumulated, so part of my objective was to cook a lot of them!

The beauty of a good pot roast is that you can add whatever veggies you want. Onions, carrots and potatoes are classic, but you can add green beans, turnips, beets… in my case I threw in a bunch of yellow squash, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes. Quantities are just as imprecise as the ingredients, just make sure you can still close the lid on the oven, and make what you like! See the YouTube video linked at the top of this article for a step-by-step video.

My version was done this way:

Ingredients
7 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and Pepper, to taste
1 boneless beef chuck roast (about 2.5 lbs)

1 lb yellow squash and zucchini, cut into 1 inch chunks
1 onion, cut into 4 wedges
2 ears corn, cleaned and cut into thirds
1/2 qt cherry tomatoes
1 pound potatoes cut into 1.5 inch pieces
3 tablespoons butter
1 quart chicken broth

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine garlic, rosemary, oil, salt and pepper. Rub all over beef.

2. EITHER a) prepare a fire with sufficient hardwood to create a significant number of hot coals (about the same volume as the dutch oven itself), or b) prepare charcoal. I like to fill a charcoal chimney about half full every thirty minutes so that I have a ready supply of coals to replenish heat over the duration of the cooking.

3. Melt butter in a deep 12″ dutch oven, and add beef. Cook in open oven until roast is browned.

4. Turn meat over, add 2 cups broth, and then add oven lid. Place about 10 coals on top of the oven and roast for up to an hour. (Replenish coals at the half hour point).

5. Turn meat over, add more broth and all the “hard” vegetables – in my case that included onion, potato, carrot and corn. Cover again (with good heat), and cook for another hour.

6. Turn meat over again, add 1 cup more broth (or more if pot is getting dry), and add softer vegetables (tomato, zucchini, squash). Cover again and cook until meat is tender, about 15 to 30 minutes. Season with more salt and pepper to taste.

Note that the recipe as written here calls for 2 and a half hours of cooking after the initial browning step. That works well for extremely tender, fall-apart beef. I was time limited, and found that 40 minutes on the beef, an additional 20 minutes with hard veggies, and then an additional 30 minutes with the soft veggies (about 1 and a half hours after browning) cooked the vegetables thoroughly and got the beef done (internal temp was above 170 deg F), and carvable.

So in almost every way, this recipe can be tailored to your situation – and it’s very forgiving, and very tasty! Enjoy!

Get Out There!