A Simple Beef Pot Roast with Prep Cook Ragout

This delicious Beef Pot Roast video recipe is dedicated to all you hungry prep cooks out there. In a restaurant kitchen, real diner breaks are more theory than practice.

There is often not enough time to get everything done, and you can't really tell the chef that you didn't get around to dicing the mushrooms because you were enjoying a nice leisurely supper.

It's not that you starve; someone is usually assigned to cook a "family meal," as it's referred to. Leftovers are pulled together and laid out buffet-style to grab when you have a chance. This thankless job is normally done by the youngest cooks, who gain valuable experience, as well as learn profanity in several languages as the results of their labors are critiqued by the older line cooks.

Prep cook ragout or ragu, is what I call the stewed vegetables that are leftover from the making of stocks, sauces, or from roasting meats. This soft, cooked-to-death "mirepoix" (onions, celery, carrots) is the last resort "family meal" side dish of the "in the weeds" apprentice.

Here, however, these same vegetables make for a really nice topping to our simple, but comforting beef pot roast. Beef, mirepoix, butter, rosemary, salt and pepper…now, that's a recipe any busy prep cook would love. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• Beef Chuck Pot Roast (about 3 1/2 pounds)
• 1 cup diced carrots
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 stick butter