This is one of the weekend cooking dinners from Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day.

We started the prep work about 3 hours before we wanted to eat. Here's the ingredient list.

• 1 beef chuck roast (approximately 4 pounds)
• Coarse salt and fresh ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds onions, thinly sliced
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bottle of pale ale(12 oz)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 mushroom bouillon cube
• 1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

 

I couldn't find a single beef chuck roast that was four pounds from Skagit River Ranch, so I bought two roasts, one that was 1.3 pounds, and one that was a little over 2 pounds. I seasoned the beef with salt and pepper and let it sit out on the counter for half an hour while I did some of the other prep work.

I preheated the oven to 300 degrees and arranged my pans. The recipe calls for the entire process to take place in a Dutch oven, but our Dutch oven really won't work well on our stove.

Heat the oil in a skillet or Dutch oven on medium-high and brown the beef on all sides. It should be crusty.

Add the onions, thyme, bay leaf, and pinch of salt to the pan. Stir frequently until the onions are soft and reduced in volume by about half. This took about 10 minutes.

 At this point, we added the beer (a Dogfish Head Ale), half a cup of water, and some fresh ground pepper.

I chopped the mushrooms and rinsed them under hot water before adding them to the pan. Once the sauce came to a boil, I got out the Dutch oven. We added the sauce to the Dutch oven and tucked the beef into the sauce.

We put the lid on the Dutch oven and slid it in the oven for an hour. After an hour, we turned the beef over and returned it to the oven for another hour. When the second hour was up, we transferred the beef to a cutting board and covered it with foil. We left the sauce in the Dutch oven and mixed in the Dijon mustard. If you want the sauce a little thicker, you could heat it on the stove a bit. The onions will practically melt. After slicing the beef and spooning the sauce on top, here's the final product.

 

That's a slice of Tall Grass Bakery's Oat and Honey bread and some smashed and roasted potatoes.

Nutrition Information

*I calculated around 8 servings. I would guess that the actual recipe is a little lower on the fat and calories depending on the cut of meat you use. Also, I recommend chilling the broth separately for leftovers and skimming off any accumulated fat.

• Calories: 746
• Fat: 56.84 grams
• Protein: 41.77 grams
• Carbohydrates: 12.6 grams
• Fiber: 1.82 grams

Final verdict: I think we'll make this again. I had it for lunch the next day and it was still very good.

 

We got a new cookbook for Christmas (thanks Mom). It's called Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day. The premise is that you should be able to get great food on the table every day. The cookbook is divided into Breakfast, Lunch, Soup, Weeknight Dinners, Weekend Cooking, Sides, Salads, Nibbles, Condiments, and Dessert.

In our quest to cook at home with fresh, local ingredients, we're trying a number of recipes from this cookbook.

After trying two of them, I believe that this cookbook will become a staple of our cookbook library.

I love to cook. I love to eat. I love to buy and eat locally. I'm also on a budget. I've decided that 2007 is the year I endeavor to cook the majority of my meals at home with fresh, local ingredients.

The love of my life happens to be diabetic. So the meals I cook at home need to be low sugar, and relatively low carb.

There are plenty of resources on the internet for low sugar and low carb recipes. However, most of those sites don't have the same feel as the great food blogs. I love Orangette, Roots and Grubs, Culinary Fool, and many others. These blogs don't just post recipes, they talk about them. I'm going to try to post a few recipes every week. Some of these recipes will be low carb, some low sugar, and some will just end up being really good.

With as many of these recipes as possible, I'll post pictures and reviews. Some of these recipes will fail and I'll probably even post some of those. Hey, just because I didn't like something doesn't mean you won't.

Enjoy!