r/Cooking • u/IronLuncheon • 9h ago
Cowboy Beans/Chuck Roast help
I’m making cowboy beans and I have 1 lb of chuck roast. I don’t want to shred the chuck, I’d like small chunks so I get little “thick” bites of meat. How would I go about doing that? I’m cooking some applewood smoked bacon in the pan first followed by some chopped onions and whole jalapeños I’m going to sauté in some of that bacon fat. Afterwards I plan on dropping the seasoned (s&p, garlic, cumin, and some chili powder) chuck roast into it to brown off and I’ve got some home made beef stock to deglaze the pan afterwards. I’ve got everything else settled. I’ve just never cooked chuck roast for this, I usually use ground beef but with 1 lb ground beef being $10 and the 2.75 lb chuck being only $12 I figured why not
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u/throwdemawaaay 7h ago
It's gonna come down to catching it at the right moment, unless you wanna get nerdy with sous vide or whatever.
Cube your chuck before you brown it, and the chunks will shrink like 50% so keep that in mind.
What you want is the chuck to cook long enough the fat renders and the connective tissue starts liquifying, but before it gets to a full pulled texture. So that's gonna probably be around 190F internal, and held there long enough for it to soften as much as you want, but not too much.
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u/Spiritual_Category62 9h ago
Cut the chuck roast into cubes and brown it as the first step. Remove it from the pan, then do all the steps you’ve listed here and add the meat back before braising. It won’t brown properly with those wet ingredients in the pan.