Stove-Top Pot Roast with Mushrooms and Sage

Directions

Trim all visible fat from the roast. Rub both sides of the roast with steak rub of your choice, then brown roast well in a tiny amount of olive oil. Put roast into dutch oven, and add onions and chopped sage. Mix mushroom base into water and pour over roast. My pot roast barely fit into the dutch oven, so I browned it in another pan. Then I de-glazed the pan I browned it in with the water, mixed in the mushroom base, and poured it over the roast. Use 1/2 – 3/4 cup water, more water for larger size pan. The roast should not be covered with water. Let roast cook at the lowest possible simmer for 2-3 hours, or until it feels almost tender when pierced with a fork; for me this was about 2 3/4 hours. Add mushrooms and cook 30-45 minutes longer. Remove roast, mushrooms and onions from pot. Discard onions and set aside mushrooms and meat. Strain liquid if desired to remove bits of sage. Remove fat using a fat separator or by skimming it off with a fine-mesh stock skimmer. Taste the liquid for flavor, and if it tastes weak to you, simmer at high heat for a few minutes to reduce. Mix 1 T flour into 2 T water with a whisk, then whisk that mixture into simmering stock and cook 5-10 minutes until gravy thickens. For my pot roast, this was enough flour to make about 1 1/4 cups of slightly thickened gravy. If you have a lot more liquid than that or you prefer thick gravy you may need a bit more flour. You could also add some beef stock to the liquid if you wanted more gravy and increase the thickening accordingly. Cut pot roast into thick slices, and serve hot with mushrooms on the side, with gravy spooned over meat and mushrooms.