This spin on Mississippi Pot Roast is delicious—and it doesn't require a slow cooker

Winter may seem dark and dreary, but I have a soft spot for January and February. It's the only time of the year when it's cold enough to cook something on the stove for a few hours without turning my home into a sauna. This makes preparing dinner so much easier: Instead of rushing around my kitchen at 6pm and getting dinner on the table in 30 minutes, I can start a soup, stew or stew earlier in the day and then let it cook largely unattended. . One of the easiest dishes to make this way is the Mississippi pan roast: a tangy, salty chocolate roast typically made by slow-cooking the meat with a packet of ranch seasoning, au jus sauce, a stick of butter and a handful of jarred pepperoncini. .

The dish is said to have its roots in Ripley, Mississippi; According to Sam Sifton, the restaurant's former associate dining editor New York TimesThe Mississippi roast became famous after a woman named Robin Chapman shared her recipe with a friend, Karen Farese, who then added it to her church's community cookbook. “At first in fits and starts, then more recently people have started sharing the image and recipe en masse on Pinterest and Reddit, Facebook and Twitter,” Sifton wrote in the New York Times in 2016. According to Google data, searches for “Mississippi fried” have steadily increased over the past 14 years, with searches peaking in January 2022.

It's no surprise that home cooks have taken to the roast: It's super easy, and most iterations of the dish require nothing more than a chocolate roast, a few sturdy packaged ingredients, and a slow cooker. Although store-bought products are fine in a pinch, we were curious to see how much tastier the stove-top, made-from-scratch version could be. With that in mind, our Birmingham, Alabama-based test kitchen colleague Elizabeth Mervosh set out to create the ultimate Mississippi pot roast recipe—one that requires no more effort than the original slow cooker version, but just as much (if not more!) ) tasty. Here's how he did it.

Cook your beef, but sear it first

Stew is one of the easiest ways to flavor meat; high heat initiates the Maillard reaction – a series of chemical reactions that occur when heat transforms the proteins and sugars in food, resulting in more complex flavors and aromas. One of the best reasons to make this dish on the stove instead of a slow cooker is that you can brown it (while some slow cookers have a browning function, not all do – and the ones that do have a browning function don't always work well.) Because browning a three-kilo beef can be a difficult task, according to our recipe, the roast meat must be cut into two steaks before being fried. Not only does this make the beef easier to handle, it also speeds up the cooking time and, more importantly, maximizes the surface area needed for browning—and thus flavor development.

Add a little gelatin

For a fuller sauce, Mervosh enriches the broth with gelatin. This is a trick from a former Serious Eats editor Kenji and our current editorial director Daniel use in some recipes, incl all-american beef stew and shepherd's pieto thicken sauces without drastically changing their taste. “This has always been my one gripe with this dish: the beef is so rich, but the sauce tends to be watery,” Mervosh wrote in his testing notes for the recipe. A few teaspoons of porcelain is enough to make a soup sauce velvety, just thick enough to coat a spoon.

Don't overbake

Another good reason to choose the stovetop over the slow cooker for this recipe is to reduce the risk of overcooking the meat and making it tough and dry. Long, slow braising can result in tender meat, but it is there is you can overcook the beef—even if you choose the stovetop instead of the slow cooker. “When steaming meat, you are playing a competitive game between two simultaneous processes,” Kenji wrote beef stew recipe. “First, the connective tissue turns into gelatin. This makes the meat tender and moist. Second, the muscle proteins are constantly contracting and pushing out the moisture inside. This hardens the meat and makes it tougher.” His solution – and Mervosh's – is to crack the lid as it cooks, keeping it at a constant temperature and preventing the stew from getting too hot.

Recreate the flavors of Ranch with buttermilk and fresh dill

Instead of ready-made ranch seasoning, we add fresh dill and whole buttermilk (basic ingredients classic ranch dressing) into the dish, which lends a herbaceous, spicy taste to the food. Add the buttermilk at the very end, and so that the dairy product does not fall asleep, temper the milk with a portion of the hot steaming liquid. Tempering can occur with rapid temperature changes, and tempering is a technique that minimizes this: Tempering involves mixing a small amount of hot liquid into cold dairy or eggheat it up, then stir the hardened mixture back into a larger container, hot liquid.

Mississippi pot roast is a great winter meal no matter where you live, and with a few tweaks, this simple dish can be even tastier.

Cooking method
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• One 3 kilos (1360g) without bones chuck friedtrimming the excess fat

• 1 teaspoon Diamond crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use half as much by volume

• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 2 tablespoon (30ml) rapeseed oil

• 4 cups (946ml) unsalted chicken stock

• Two 1/4 oz packages unflavored gelatin (16g; about 5 1/2 teaspoon)

• 5 medium cloves of garlic (25g), crush and peel

• 1 small lump fresh dill (14g), with 1 tablespoon (2g) of chopped dill reserved for decoration

• 6 medium jar pepperoncini salad pepperand (3 1/2 ounce; 100g), rinse, plus 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of liquid from a glass, divided

• 1/2 cup (120ml) whole writer

1. Set the oven rack to the lowest position and preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Place the baked chuck flat side down on a cutting board; cut in half horizontally to create 2 steaks. Season with salt and black pepper. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. Fry the chuck-roasted steaks one piece at a time until deep brown on both sides, 5-8 minutes per side, reducing the heat as necessary to avoid over-browning. Transfer the baked chuck to a 9-by-13-inch rimmed baking sheet. Remove Dutch oven from heat and carefully pour drippings into a small heatproof bowl to cool; to throw away.

2. While the chuck is browning, pour stock into a large bowl and sprinkle with gelatin. Let sit until fully hydrated, about 10 minutes.

3. Add the gelatin mixture, garlic and dill to the Dutch oven. Return the chuck steaks and any accumulated juices to the Dutch oven. Roasted pepperoncini peppers on top. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cover, leaving the lid slightly ajar (about 1/2 inch), and simmer until the roast is fork-tender, 2 hours 45 minutes to 3 hours. Carefully transfer the roasts to the work surface; Shred it into large pieces with 2 forks, discarding the larger pieces of fat.

4. Place dutch oven with liquid over medium heat and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring often, until slightly softened, about 6 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the pepperoncini liquid.

5. In a small bowl, stir together the buttermilk and 1/2 cup of the hot braising liquid from the Dutch oven until well combined. Mix the buttermilk mixture with the remaining braising liquid in the Dutch oven. Return the shredded roasts to the Dutch oven and toss to combine. Garnish with chopped dill.

Special equipment

Large dutch oven

Preparation and storage

Mississippi Roast can be stored in an airtight container and refrigerated for up to 4 days. To reheat, scrape off the solidified fat and reheat slowly in a 148ºC oven or simmer until heated through.

The remaining meat and braising liquid can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator.