.................. Cooking with Barry & Meta: Eck Roast — “Not Your Grandma’s Pot Roast” as featured in KANSAS! magazine

An article about Eck Agriculture appears in the lastest (2024, vol. 80, issue 3) of KANSAS! magazine — A Reimagined Roast, Straight from the Ranch (pp. 26-29).

This assemble-and-forget recipe, an Eck family favorite, goes in the slow cooker early in the morning and is ready to eat in the evening. Instead of serving pot roast with potatoes and carrots, the way Grandma used to do it, they use it for roast beef sandwiches, burritos, quesadillas, Shepard's Pie and beef and noodles.

Many of the flavor additions help tenderize the roast that is considered a less-tender cut of beef. Slow cooking also helps in the tenderization process, helping to create flavor-packed morsels of beef.

Darrin thinks the only thing that would make this roast any better is if they could package the rub and bottle the sauce so he could quickly throw the recipe together early in the morning.

Barry and I first tasted this roast at a farm expo where Darrin and Beth offered samples. It was a great marketing technique as we bought a roast and have been making Beth Covington’s recipe every since.

Enjoying an Eco roast beef dinner with the Brown family.

Eck Roast — “Not Your Grandma’s Pot Roast” Yield: Bone-in beef chuck pot roasts will yield 2 to 2-1/2 three-ounce servings of cooked, trimmed beef per pound

INGREDIENTS
3 to 3 ½ pounds Eck Beef Roast (Pike’s Peak or heel of the round, chuck, rump, etc.)

2 teaspoons kosher salt (approx..)

1 teaspoon (approx.) black pepper

2 tablespoons (approx..) seasoning of choice as needed to liberally rub roast (Trager’s Beef Rub, Kinder’s Steak Blend, or Daddy Hinkle’s)

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, or enough to coat the bottom of pan

1 medium sweet onion, sliced into wedges

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon Better Than Bouillon’s Roasted Beef Bouillon

1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium)

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup Hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon cornstarch + 1 tablespoon cold water

DIRECTIONS

1. Liberally cover both sides of roast with salt, pepper, and your favorite seasonings.

2. Heat olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Add roast and sear until browned on all sides, approximately 2 to 3 minutes per side. This adds a nice bark to your roast and really imparts a rich flavor into the meat.

3. Place roast in slow cooker. Add one medium sweet onion, sliced into wedges, and 1 tablespoon of minced garlic.

4. Mix boiling water, beef base, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, hoisin sauce. Pour over the roast.

5. Cook on low for 6- 8 hours.

6. Remove meat from crockpot, trim fat, and shred. Reserve cooking liquid.

7. Make thickening sauce: Combine 1 T cornstarch into 1 T cold water. Mix into 1 cup of reserved cooking liquid (For thicker sauce, use 2 tablespoon corn starch) Add any desired additional seasonings.

8. Return shredded meat and sauce to crockpot. Let sauce thicken (use low or warm setting) for 30 to 45 minutes.

Article appears in the 2024, vol. 80, issue 3 of KANSAS! magazine — A Reimagined Roast, Straight from the Ranch (pp. 26-29)

Original Eck recipe provided at the Farm Expo.

Recipe without photos . . . Eck Roast — “Not Your Grandma’s Pot Roast” Yield: Bone-in beef chuck pot roasts will yield 2 to 2-1/2 three-ounce servings of cooked, trimmed beef per pound