Meat cooked/Veggies didn't

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Dancer in the kitchen

Senior Cook
Joined
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Virginia Beach, VA
I got a recipe from the Foodnetwork for pot roast. It sounded really good & basically they said to cook it on low for 12 hours. I think my first mistake was that I used the wrong cut of meat. I used a London Broil (I know, but it was on sale) & it came out almost liver-like in texture. :sick: AND the veggies weren't cooked all the way!

I can understand the meat not turning out, but why didn't the veggies finish cooking? It contained parsnips, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes & baby carrots. I salted & peppered the meat & coated it with flour. Then I made a mixture of diced tomatoes, maple syrup, corriander (my husband hates cumin & this seems to be a good sub), onion & garlic powder & poured it over the whole thing. The meat was supposed to shred apart. I ended up slicing it. My family ate it, but I sure didn't care for it.

Advice? :unhappy:
 
oven or crock pot? what temp? did you slice veggies same size or leave whole or? all of this info matters in helping you figure out what happened.
 
Robo410 said:
oven or crock pot? what temp? did you slice veggies same size or leave whole or? all of this info matters in helping you figure out what happened.

It was in the crock pot on low & the veggies were sliced relatively all the same size. I have to think it was the cut of meat I used that caused it to be so icky. What also puzzled me was that the sweet potatoes DID cook, but the regular ones (Idaho) were still a bit crunchy. I thought sweet potatoes were more dense. :unsure:

Thanks for the response! :chef:
 
Hi Dance,
I'm not 100% sure about this, but many years ago when I got my 1st crock pot I believe the book that came with it recommended putting the veggies on the bottom of the pot and the meat on top of the veggies.
I could be wrong though, that was a looooooong time ago:rolleyes:
 
this is just a guess here but i'm almost thinking it was either the temperature or maybe the crockpot wasnt functioning properly. i usually set my crock at medium or if you dont have a medium setting start it off at high for an hour then kick it down to low for the remainder and of course certain veggies take longer to cook than others. i have been fighting the pot roast battle for years and found a dutch oven to be the best option for myself.
 
I am thinking the same as chasinmichigan. It almost sounds like a malfunction. Afte2 12 hours those veggies should have been cooked.

JohnL is right about the veggies going on the bottom. I am really not sure if that would have made the difference, but it might have.
 
JohnL said:
Hi Dance,
I'm not 100% sure about this, but many years ago when I got my 1st crock pot I believe the book that came with it recommended putting the veggies on the bottom of the pot and the meat on top of the veggies.
I could be wrong though, that was a looooooong time ago:rolleyes:

That's what the recipe recommended. So your memory serves you well. :) You just brought to mind that maybe I put too many veggies?:ermm: I did have to take some out cuz it was too full. Maybe I should've kept going.
 
chasinmichigan said:
this is just a guess here but i'm almost thinking it was either the temperature or maybe the crockpot wasnt functioning properly. i usually set my crock at medium or if you dont have a medium setting start it off at high for an hour then kick it down to low for the remainder and of course certain veggies take longer to cook than others. i have been fighting the pot roast battle for years and found a dutch oven to be the best option for myself.

I have to agree with you on that one. I always wonder about keeping it on low for all that time. I have heard about cooking on high the first hour & then dropping the temperature. 'Course that was for turkeys, maybe it holds true for crock pots as well. Plus I have no idea how old the crock pot is. I think I will go with your advice & set it to medium or at the very least med/low.

Thanks! A lot of food for thought (pun intended)! :rolleyes:
 
I usually add the weggies during the last 1/2 hour of cooking the roast or beef stew, and that's usually after I've thickened the juice to make brown gravy to the meat.

Some veggies you can add during startup, but things like potatoes and carrots, I think, should be added during the last 30 to 45 minutes because they cook up reasonably quick, and if you add them when you start braising the meat, you'll more than likely end up with mush.
 
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Dancer in the kitchen said:
I got a recipe from the Foodnetwork for pot roast. It sounded really good & basically they said to cook it on low for 12 hours. I think my first mistake was that I used the wrong cut of meat. I used a London Broil (I know, but it was on sale) & it came out almost liver-like in texture. :sick: AND the veggies weren't cooked all the way!

I can understand the meat not turning out, but why didn't the veggies finish cooking? It contained parsnips, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes & baby carrots. I salted & peppered the meat & coated it with flour. Then I made a mixture of diced tomatoes, maple syrup, corriander (my husband hates cumin & this seems to be a good sub), onion & garlic powder & poured it over the whole thing. The meat was supposed to shred apart. I ended up slicing it. My family ate it, but I sure didn't care for it.

Advice? :unhappy:

I guess you now know that that cut of meat should be cooked quickly and to medium rare at the most.

Wow - I would assume that the steam would have cooked the veggies too but I'm like everyone else and put them under the meat.
 
I make roasts in the slow cooker all the time and never had this happen, whether I'm cooking quickly in a few hours or longer.... about 5-7 hours. I was thinking malfunction like some others, but the fact that the meat overcooked leaves me wondering why the veggies were undercooked (or you could say they were al dente ;) ).
Like I mentioned in another topic, I normally left the veggies on top of the meat and only recently started putting just the carrots on the bottom to keep the meat somewhat out of the juices. Which leads me to ask this dumb question: You did add some kind of liquid, right?

I went over your recipe several times and the only liquid I saw was maple syrup. And I wouldn't call a syrup a liquid. I saw you used powdered onion, too. I always use real onions plus some water. Real onions give off a lot of juice.

Just a suggestion..... And you did leave the lid on too, right? If you kept checking it all the time you would be letting out the steam from whatever liquids you had in there.
 
pacanis said:
I make roasts in the slow cooker all the time and never had this happen, whether I'm cooking quickly in a few hours or longer.... about 5-7 hours. I was thinking malfunction like some others, but the fact that the meat overcooked leaves me wondering why the veggies were undercooked (or you could say they were al dente ;) ).
Like I mentioned in another topic, I normally left the veggies on top of the meat and only recently started putting just the carrots on the bottom to keep the meat somewhat out of the juices. Which leads me to ask this dumb question: You did add some kind of liquid, right?

I went over your recipe several times and the only liquid I saw was maple syrup. And I wouldn't call a syrup a liquid. I saw you used powdered onion, too. I always use real onions plus some water. Real onions give off a lot of juice.

Just a suggestion..... And you did leave the lid on too, right? If you kept checking it all the time you would be letting out the steam from whatever liquids you had in there.

I did all the right things as you suggested. The liquid part was the mixture of diced tomatoes & syrup along with the spices. I don't use real onions because my family doesn't like them. The only other thing I can come up with is that I used the wrong cut of meat & may have had too many veggies in it. I don't think I'll cook on low anymore either. I can't even remember when I got my crockpot so malfunction may be another factor. The lowest I'll go is maybe med/low.

Thanks for the suggestions though. :)
 
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