Like a scorned lover who cuts her boyfriend’s picture out of every photo album she owns, I tossed my Yankee Pot Roast recipe when Hannah told me I’d essentially been living in a fool’s paradise all these years.  I retrieved it and here it is:

2½ pounds beef round (cut into cubes)
½ tsp. Black pepper
¼ tsp. Table salt
2 large onions, sliced
1¾ C. Water
1 packet Onion Soup Mix
1½ Tbs. Balsamic Vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 tsp. Dried thyme
8 medium uncooked red potatoes, scrubbed and quartered
1 pound baby carrots
1 tbs. Fresh chopped parsley

Place oven rack in lowest possible position and preheat to 350° F.

Coat a Dutch oven (large pot with a tight fitting lid) with olive oil and heat over medium Heat.

Sprinkle roast with pepper and salt and place in the pot and scatter the onions around the roast.  Cook, turning the roast and stirring the onions occasionally until the roast and onions are browned. (about 8 minutes)

Pour the water into the pot, stir in the soup mix, vinegar and thyme and bring it to a boil.  Cover the pot and bake in the over for about 1½ hours.  Place the potatoes and carrots around the roast, cover and bake until the roast and vegetables are tender (about 2 hours more). Remove one potato from the pot and puree in a blender, then stir it into the gravy to thicken it.. Garnish it with the parsley if you don’t have the kind of kids that don’t trust anything green.

Laraine Newman