Pinot Noir Pot Roast

Although I have always savored the delicious roasts that I have been served at both elegant and humble dinner tables, creating one of my own seemed a bit beyond my culinary reach. Experienced chefs may laugh when they read this, thinking: "But it’s not hard at all to make a pot roast!" You’ll understand then just how little I knew about cooking before my gluten-free diet began last December... and how far I’ve come!

Such surprise and delight - such joy - when at last I realized that creating a roast is one of the simplest and most effective uses of cooking time... for a tender roast is not only a thing of beauty, it also provides meal after meal for a family of four.

This dinner will really and truly melt in your mouth.


Pinot Noir Pot Roast

What You’ll Need:

A 3 lb boneless beef chuck roast, trimmed
1 cup Pinot Noir (any decent dry red wine is okay)
28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes, without juice
4 cloves minced garlic
8 oz Crimini mushrooms, quartered
2 small yellow onions
3 celery stalks, sliced fairly thinly (1/2 inch wide)
1 tbsp marjoram
1 cup beef bouillon
Olive oil
Fresh ground black pepper
Sea salt

How It Works:

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F.

Place your chuck roast on a wooden cutting board or a stainless steel tray, gently salt and pepper it on all sides. Next, pour a decent sized glug of olive oil into the bottom of an oven safe three quart Dutch oven or cast iron pot which can be covered with an oven safe lid. Heat oil until warm but not smoking over a medium temperature burner. Add your chuck roast and cook on all sides until it is brown on all sides (10 – 15 minutes). Remove meat from pot but retain drippings, place meat in a separate dish to the side.

Next add chopped onions and celery to the oil and drippings at the bottom of the pot. Lightly season them with salt and pepper and cook at medium temperature until they begin to brown (6-8 minutes). Add minced garlic and dry marjoram, continue to sauté for a minute or two.

With clean hands, crush your whole tomatoes directly into the pot – but do not add the remaining juice in the can. Stir the onion-celery-tomato mixture frequently and allow to sauté for another two or three minutes, when you will add the cup of Pinot Noir.


Boil the entire mixture for five minutes before adding the beef broth and then boiling for five more minutes.

Now comes the final and easiest part. Return your browned chuck roast to the pot, spooning some of the juicy onion-celery-tomato mixture onto its top. Cover the pot, place it in the oven and cook it for 90 minutes.


When your timer goes off, take the lid off of the pot, turn your roast over and add the quartered mushrooms into the wine sauce around the sides of the roast. Cover the pot once again, and cook it for 90 more minutes.

Although you can serve it up right away, you certainly don’t have to. The longer your roast sits in its juices, the more rich and flavorful it will be. Spoon away excess fats before serving, but you will not even need to cut this roast, the meat is so tender and juicy it will seriously fall apart when you even touch it with a fork. Amazing!

Serve with rice or potatoes, and a side of sautéed or roasted carrots. Make sure to cover it with a nice helping of the tomato wine sauce. This is a wonderful dish to serve in the Autumn and Winter months... one bite will warm you from top to toe and its scent alone will make your house smell incredibly cozy and inviting.

Serves 6 – 8.


Adapted from "Red-Wine Pot Roast with Porcini" from The Flavors of Bon Appetit 2007 (p. 40)