What's your personal favourite recipe for pot-roasting 4.5lbs of bottom round (silverside in the UK) beef?

In a slow cooker: First brown the beef in a mix of butter and olive oil. This greatly improves the texture and flavor. Remove the browned beef to the slow cooker.

Chop up two onions into wedges and put them in the pan with the olive oil and butter, adding more butter/oil if needed, and let them saute until translucent. Also chop up four large stems of celery into two-inch pieces, and four largish carrots, and saute them until the celery is soft and the carrots have turned very bright, with browned edges. Transfer all the veggies to the slow cooker and pile around the beef.

Back to the pan: mix in 1/2 c. Beef broth (real broth) and 1/4 c. Of your favorite red wine, scraping up the tasty browned bits from the bottom of the pan as you go.

This is called deglazing the pan (and makes it easier to clean, too). Add 1 tsp. Beef broth concentrate--not bouillion if possible; 1/4 c.

Balsamic vinegar; 1 T. Tomato paste (the kind in a tube is least wasteful this way); 1 clove or 1/2 tsp. Crushed garlic; 1 T.

Rosemary; 2 T. Thyme and stir it in well. Allow it to bubble away and reduce a bit.

Then dump the sauce you've just made over the beef in the slow cooker. Then add 2-3 bay leaves. Set it to cook on low for around 8 hours.It's a bonus if your slow cooker has a keep warm setting to keep this at the right temp for serving.

The flavors will continue to meld; but get it out before it starts getting too brown at the edges. Alternately, you could make up the sauce ahead of time and marinate the beef in it overnight or longer, and then still use the sauce to deglaze the pan and add it to the roast.

I would actually start it the day before with some vegetables and a light brown gravy cover it in flour and salt and pepper and brown it all around in some oil then set it down in the cooker with a beef stew mix ready mix and set it on high for a few hours then on low for the rest of the day - then in the evening add your carrots, celery and onions. By the next day it should be falling apart and you can add other veggies or just leave it like that. You can also cook it in a bag in the oven with some veggies.

Good luck.

First, brown the beef on all sides in hot olive oil (and maybe a bit of onion/garlic). This accomplishes 2 things. Instead of a brown/gray exterior, you have a nicely browned exterior.

Secondly, by searing the exterior you lock in the flavor and moisture. In terms of actually cooking it, I would recommend doing it in a slow cooker. Throw in some small vidallia onions, carrots, some beef stock and some dark red wine.

The red wine combines nicely with the carrots and onions and marinates as it cooks. It gives it a bit of a stong (but very tasty) flavor that combines great with red meat. You may wish to leave the lid off the slow cooker for the first half hour or so, so that the alcohol in the wine is able to cook off.

Remember, the key for cooking that type of meat is low and slow. A low temperature for a long time. Doing this helps the protiens in the meat break down and thus make it tender and practically fall apart.

If its still tough when you take it out, you havent cooked it long enough, haha.

Brown the beef on all sides in hot oil. Throw it in a crock pot, fat side up, with a can of whole tomatoes, some vegetables (celery, onion, carrots) if you like, and generous amounts of garlic, red wine vinegar, oregano and sweet basil. Put it on low for about 6 hours, then pour about a shot of some good smoky and peaty scotch or bourbon in there, and cook for another 2 hours.

The cooking method that is used is slow moist heat called braising. We define braising as a method of cooking in which the meat is browned in hot oil or fat and then cooked in moist heat in a covered vessel (Dutch oven) at temperature just barely above the boiling point. The first step is to brown the meat.

The brown paper bag trick will do nicely. Take 1/2-cup of white flour or so, season it with salt and pepper. Put this flour mixture in a large supermarket brown paper bag and place in the bag a bottom round, 3 to 5 pound, roast.

Close the top of the bag and shake well. The meat is now well flour coated. Shake or dust off the excess flour.

Place a large sauté or frying pan on high heat and add 2 or 3 tablespoons of peanut oil or other oil in the fry pan and brown or sear the meat on ALL sides. It may smoke a little but the meat must be well browned on all sides. Put the meat in your heavy gauge pot, with a tight fitting cover.

Now add 1-1/2 cups or so of canned beef stock or water. Scrape the pan well with a wooden spoon. This deglazing process is important to capture the entire good flavor from the browning process.

Turn your oven on to 325° F. Pour the hot liquid over the beef. Put the cover on and put the pot on a stovetop burner and bring to a slow boil.

This pot roast is not cooked on top of the stove. The very even dry oven heat surrounding your pot will slow cook your pot roast to perfection. Put the pot in the 325° oven and roast for about 20 minutes per pound.Do not overcook or you will end up with a mass of stringy meat fibers suitable only for the kennel.

Checking for doneness is not difficult. Put a fork into the meat, if the fork meets with resistance it needs to be cooked longer. If the fork goes into the meat easily the pot roast is done.

A sure fire way to insure for doneness is a meat thermometer. Put it into the roast and when it reads 170° it's done. Take the pot roast pot out of the oven and let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes with the cover on.

Then take the cover off and let the pot roast rest for another 10 minutes. Remove the meat to a platter.It is now the time to make the gravy or as the French say ---make the sauce. The gravy making is the easiest of all.

Simply, put 3 or 4 tablespoons of white flour in a covered container with a cup of cold water (a blender does a nice job). Shake or mix well. Put your pot with the meat juices back on a burner and bring to a slow boil.

Slowly add the flour and water mixture until the gravy reaches the desired thickness and texture. Stir constantly. Cut the meat into 1/4 inch slices and serve with the gravy.

Step back and await the applause that is sure to come! HERE'S TWO OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY LIKE----- http://books.google.co.in/books?id=uHRsuM_HkE4C&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=pot-roasting++bottom+round&source=bl&ots=9i4tJGZ_2y&sig=5MEFiRraLwE_itwXAE4qAS6hoaY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result & http://southernfood.about.com/cs/potroastrecipes/a/potroast.htm.

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