Roasting Rack

      No, it's not a metaphor for the Presidential primary.*  It's my Perfect Pot.  Some time back, they had one of their (frequent) sales, and I still had a discount coupon.  So I decided I'd better get one.  Mine's even a screamin' wasabi green color that they don't have available right now.  It's been just as useful as you might think a large, heavy-walled, non-stick stewpot would be, ideal for simmering Hoppin' John, beef stew or pasta sauce supercharged with fresh vegetables and extra meat.  But it's got one feature I have rarely used: a drop-in roasting rack, coated in the same ceramic non-stick as the inside of the pot, that stands about an inch above the bottom on three small, silicone-cushioned feet.

      Our corner grocery had nice-looking beef pot roast at an appealing price.  It's good stuff but a little fatty.  I can work with that, pouring the broth off into my grease separator in batches and adding it back in, but it's a lot of bother and the end result is still a bit greasier than I'd prefer.  So I decided to try the rack.

      I put coarse salt, pepper and a touch of garlic powder† on the roast, and browned all sides in a little olive oil in the pan first; then I lifted it out, set the rack in place, and set the roast on it, pouring a little black coffee into the pot.  That's an old trick; it tenderizes the meat and adds some depth to the flavor.  I put the lid on and let it get to simmering while I got ready to add vegetables; after thirty minutes, I lifted the lid, had a look, and added beef broth, keeping the level lower than the top of the rack.

      I washed a couple of potatoes and cut each one into six big chunks.  Those in, I cleaned up a double handful of the short "baby carrots" (they're not) sold in bags, added them, and took my time preparing three big stalk of celery, cut in sections an inch or so long.  I finished with a white onion, sectioned in fairly large pieces.  The onion went in about an hour after I'd put the roast in the rack.

      The pot kept simmering.  I looked at it every half-hour or so and added broth if the level seemed low (not easy to see.  The pot was pretty full).  At the two-hour mark, I added four ears of corn, still on the cob.  At two and a half hours, the corn was cooked, potatoes were soft and the meat thermometer said the beef was done.

      Sliced, it was reasonably tender and not overcooked.  With the roast out, I poured the broth into the grease separator -- the pot's got a good-sized spout, like an old cast-iron pan -- and the vegetables were flavorful, well-steamed and not greasy.  A little of the separated broth over the meat and vegetables, corn on the side and there's dinner -- and the leftover meat, vegetables and broth made a nice stew the next day.
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* Would that it were, though.  Candidates don't get anything like the third degree I'd like to see all of them face.  Instead, it's a battle to see who can thump out the bassiest appeal to the partisan base. This runs a real risk of building so hermetic an echo chamber that the post-primary campaign never broadens out and the November results arrive as either foregone anticlimax or a terrible shock.  They shouldn't take the outcome for granted.  Winner or loser, I want 'em to worry more about ways to appeal to everyone with genuinely good ideas than trying to blow on the spinning dice.  Yeah, "Welcome to Hell.  Would you like ice water?  Tough."
 
† This is a compromise.  If I try to keep fresh garlic around, it's either dried out or gone funky when I when I need it, and it's hard to work with without getting the kind of garlicky fingers that mean no petting the cats until scrubbed and scrubbed: that whole allium family is not good for cats. Garlic powder keeps a long time and is easy to handle, but it's harsher than fresh garlic.