The Best & Easiest Mississippi Pot Roast

If you’ve never made a roast before in your life, don’t worry! This is an incredibly easy and fool-proof recipe.

To start with the main ingredient, the meat:

I personally prefer buying the Tender Chuck Roast cut of meat- like its name suggests, it’s incredibly tender. It has just enough fat to keep it tender and add a nice rich flavor, but there’s not so much fat on it to where you’re biting into the gelatinous globs of doom.

The only method I use is a crockpot, so if you’re using an instant pot, I can’t really give any advice on that because I’ve never used one before. But there are probably thousands of videos for that on the internet!

You can start this 1 of 2 ways, I’ve done both and they’re both equally fabulous. You can start by getting a nice sear on your roast in a hot skillet, and THEN add it to the crockpot to finish cooking, or, you can add the raw meat straight to the crock pot. Both work wonderfully. The sear simply adds a little flavor and depth to the overall taste!

If you’re starting with a sear, add your roast to a skillet on a nice medium/high heat and sear 2-3 minutes on each side of the meat. Then add the meat to your crockpot along with the beef broth, seasonings, Pepperoncini peppers, and a little butter.

We’re going to cook this on the LOW setting for 5-9 hours. This depends on how large your cut of roast is, and how many you have in there. My tender chuck roasts are usually about 1.75 lbs each, and I always make 2 at a time so we can enjoy leftovers throughout the week!

I started mine in the crockpot after a quick sear, at around 9 am and it was finished at 5pm. If I only cooked one roast, it probably would’ve taken about 5 hours. So that was about 8 hours of cooking on low, for both roasts. If you’re in a huge hurry or pressed for time, you can cook yours on high and it should take about half the time, give or take an hour or 2. The lower and slower & longer you cook it, the more tender it is. If you go to cut into it and you’re having to saw the meat up, that means it either needs more time to cook, or you used a cut of roast that’s just a lot tougher than the tender chuck roast that I use. I’ve made roasts before that took close to 11 hours to fully cook, I was extremely anxious that I had ruined it or overcooked it, but I came back every hour and it was slowly getting more and more tender. So just hang in there and don’t be scared if you go to cut in and it’s still super tough!

After adding the seared or un-seared roast to the crockpot, I add in the beef broth. Today I was out of beef broth so I used water mixed with beef bouillon and I made the equivalent of 4 cups of beef broth. I then added in my packets of Au Jus Gravy mix, and my ranch seasoning. If I used ranch packets, I would’ve added 2, but I have a container of it so I used about 1 1/2 tbsps of it.

Add the pepperoncini peppers to your liking, I personally added about 7 along with a big splash of the juice that they come in. It’s essentially a vinegar based juice, so if you don’t have the peppers, you can add 2-4 tbsps of white vinegar. This will add the faintest twang to the flavor, so if you’d rather it just taste beefy and salty, you can skip the peppers or vinegar. I also add in a few stalks of celery and 1 white onion for the amazing flavor. The ranch seasoning also adds the perfect amount of tanginess to it, so again, if you don’t like that then you might want to skip. But trust me, it tastes amazing and does NOT taste like tangy vinegar ranch, I swear!

After cooking my roast for about 7 hours, I waited until about 2 hours before I was ready to serve dinner and THEN I added in my baby carrots and little bitty baby potatoes. If you add them in at the beginning, they will turn to complete mush after cooking for so long. So you want to add them in just a couple hours before you’re ready to serve. If you’re using bigger potatoes or whole carrots, you might need to add them in closer to 4 hours before you’re ready to serve.

Once you’re ready to serve, you can easily pick out the cooked down celery stalks, onion, and pepperoncini peppers, as they’ll be verrrrry cooked at this point. You’re using them for flavor to cook the meat, but if you’d like to eat them then go right ahead! If you pick them out, don’t throw them away just yet! You can put them in a freezer bag and freeze them and when you have enough veggie scraps, veggie peelings or left over veggies that were raw, cooked, or simply about to go bad- you can take them out of the freezer and make a wonderful vegetable broth with them. We love using things that otherwise would’ve gone to waste!