Pot Roast & Mashed Potatoes

Pot roast is one of the easiest low salt dishes to prepare, and it's pretty much fool proof too. I try to buy a large chuck roast that's not too fatty. Once I get it home, I remove as much visible fat as I can and brown it well on both sides in a dutch oven. Then I add the flavorings I'm in the mood for. Last week I was in a tomato mood, so I added one can of no-salt-added stewed tomatoes, a cup of homemade beef broth, a bay leaf, several cloves of garlic, and half of a package of frozen pearl onions. I also threw in a tea ball with some whole allspice and whole black pepper. Sometimes I put the pot roast in the oven, but this time I kept it on the stove top at a low simmer. I turned it once after about two hours and let it continue cooking. Really simple and really tasty! The sauce was wonderful!


Once it was done, I divided it and froze half of it. I was able to get two dinners and one lunch from the portion I kept in the fridge.

Mashed Potatoes
The pot roast gravy was begging for mashed potatoes, but salt free mashed potatoes can be pretty blah. I wanted to experiment to see if I could improve the flavor. The biggest problem was in boiling the peeled potato cubes. The water seemed to leach out all the good potato flavor. And without salt there's no way to really replace that flavor. I've tried roasted garlic, green onions, sour cream, etc. Better than plain, but still lacking something.

I decided this time to eliminate the boiling and the peeling. Instead I steamed whole, unpeeled Yukon Gold potatoes until they were tender. I hoped this would keep the potato flavor from being diluted. Once the potatoes were tender, I mashed them, with the peels still on, and added milk, butter, and freshly ground pepper. I didn't want to add anything else because I wanted to taste them unadulterated to see if my experiment was successful. They tasted pretty good, much better than previous attempts, so I was happy with the results.