Barbecued Pot Roast

For Father's Day this year, we barbecued a pot roast in honor of my dad.  This was one of his summer specialties and one that was always my favorite.  He didn't have the recipe written down so I've been trying to figure out how to make the pot roast taste the way he made it.   He made his own barbecue sauce and then just let the pot roast slowly cook on the rotisserie barbecue all day.  It was a great way to spend a summer day in the backyard with a wonderful meal at the end of it all.  Here's a photo of one of those barbecues in 1989 with my dad holding Nick.  You can see the rotisserie turkey on the table which was another one of his specialities.  
My dad passed away in 1993 but we would often have barbecues in his memory like we did in 2014 on his birthday during Memorial Day when we lived in Idaho.  I've been trying to duplicate his barbecued pot roast recipe and I finally came up with a sauce recipe that tastes like I remember it.   We don't have a rotisserie barbecue so I figured out how to cook it on our Traeger grill and it turned out perfect this time. My recipe uses a Dutch oven on the barbecue to cook the pot roast so it ends up being super tender and falls apart with the touch of the fork.

Rotisserie 

If you have a rotisserie on your barbecue, I would cook it that way using a Rotisserie Basket for about 4-6 hours, or as long as it takes until it feels tender when poked with a fork.  Pot roasts are more tough than say, a sirloin beef roast, so they must be cooked slow and steady and a rotisserie basket works well for that.  You can also baste it during the cooking period using some of the marinade set aside when you make it.

Father's Day 2020

As with other holidays in this age of coronavirus, ours was low key although we did have another Zoom family call which was fun.   You can see our family members are getting less and less as time goes on since not as many places have "stay-at-home" orders anymore or maybe people are just getting tired of seeing family this much! ha ha ha

Here we are in May for our Mother's Day Zoom Call.

In April on Easter, this was our very first Zoom call when everyone in the family logged on at various times.

After the Zoom call,  Lauren came over to join us for dinner and then Bruce opened presents.

I picked up this root beer float kit from a local elementary school that was doing a fund raiser which came with a Beer Junction beer mug.  The Beer Junction is a local beer bar in our neighborhood that has over 1,300 different beers plus 50 on tap and it's a very popular spot.  The kit also came with three bottles of Dad's root beer (appropriate for Father's Day) and vanilla ice cream from Husky Deli, another local favorite that's been in our neighborhood since 1932.  So, besides a great Father's Day gift, I was able to support three different wonderful organizations from our neighborhood.

We didn't have root beer floats, however, because that is more of a Fourth of July dessert in our family so I'll save the root beer for that.  Instead, Bruce always wants carrot cake, his favorite dessert.  I didn't want to make a carrot cake because it's too much left over with just three of us so instead I made a carrot cake cobbler that turned out excellent and satisfied Bruce's carrot cake fix.

We all decided that it was more of a fall dessert, though, because of the cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg that was in it and made it taste very fall-ish.   It had a nice, gooey caramal sauce topping that was delicious and the recipe suggested having cream cheese ice cream with it but we thought the plain vanilla ice cream from Husky deli was just fine.  It was a lot faster to make than a whole carrot cake with cream cheese frosting so I'll definitely keep this recipe since it passed the taste test of Bruce and Lauren.  I also made some German potato salad and roasted asparagus, all which complimented the barbecued pot roast really well, a perfect summer dinner.

Barbecued Chuck Roast

Serves 4-6

2/3 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. mustard

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 boneless beef chuck roast (2-1/2 to 3 pounds)

1.  In a bowl, combine the first nine ingredients.

2.  Reserve about 1/4 cup of marinade, cover and refrigerate. Pour the rest of the marinade into a large shallow dish or zip lock baggie.  Add roast.  Turn to coat; cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.  

3.  Drain roast and discard marinade.  

For rotisserie:  Place roast in a rotisserie basket and let meat cook for 4-6 hours until tender when a fork is poked into it.  Baste with reserved marinade during the cooking process.

For Traeger:  Place roast directly on the grill and set temperature at 180 degrees for 1-1/2 hours.

2.  Remove from grill.

3.  Turn temperature up to 275 degrees and place meat in Dutch oven and put back on grill.

4.  Baste periodically with reserved marinade.

5.  After about 3 hours, check meat for tenderness.  Remove from heat if fork poked into meat reveals it is tender.

Enjoy your barbecued pot roast!