5-Ingredient Pot Roast (Featuring 40 Cloves of Garlic)

A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big, BIG everything else: flavor, ideas, wow factor. Psst: We don't count water, salt, pepper, and certain fats (say, olive oil to dress greens or sauté onions), since we're guessing you have those covered. Today, we’re flipping a garlicky French classic on its head.

In 1927, acclaimed food journalist Waverly Root left America for Europe. At the time, he wrote, "You were looked down upon if you ate garlic." When he returned to the States 13 years later, "You were looked down upon if you didn't."

Indeed, the mid-20th century in America marked a garlic awakening. A garlic enlightenment, a garlic renaissance, dare I say a garlic revolution. For which we have the French to thank—and James Beard.

Affectionately known as the father of American cookery, Beard snagged some of his greatest culinary inspiration from, well, not-America. During World War II, he served as part of the United Seamen’s Service, which took him from Puerto Rico to Marseilles. The latter, writes Robin Cherry in Garlic, an Edible Biography, was the game-changer:

“Garlic was known as the truffle of Provence, and Beard returned from Marseilles with two garlicky recipes that would become his signatures.”

Enter Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. Since the 1940s, Provençal cooking was becoming more and more popular in the States, and garlic tagged along for the ride. Beard’s recipe gave Americans permission to use the ingredient with abandon.

Basically, you pan-sear chicken parts and garlic cloves, deglaze with vermouth, add celery, herbs, and broth, then braise for 1 1/2 hours. During this time, the garlic melts into a mellower, sweeter, creamier version of its raw self, becoming the sidekick chicken never knew it needed. Americans loved it.

And they still do. Decades later and the 40-clove hype has yet to fade. Cooks Illustrated published their version in 2003. Helen Rosner published hers in Saveur in 2012, noting “you can use up to 100 cloves.” Leite’s Culinaria, earlier this year. And don’t forget Nigella Lawson and Ina Garten and Martha Stewart.

I could have thrown my hat into the ring but I had another idea: If 40 cloves of garlic is so good with chicken, what else is it so good with? What other slow, saucy, meaty braises could it upgrade?

Pot roast.

Thanks to geniuses Betty Wason and Nach Waxman, I’m a big believer that simple does it when braising beef. You only need a few ingredients and a lot of time.

This recipe is no different—except, I increased the quantity of one ingredient. For some perspective, let’s take a gander at that Nach Waxman recipe. It calls for 6 pounds of brisket and 3 cloves of garlic. My recipe calls for 3 pounds of beef chuck and 40 cloves of garlic. Which means it uses over 26 times as much garlic.

Is that wrong? And if it is, do we really want to be right? Just like with the chicken, the garlic melts into the coziest gravy, which makes peeling three (ahem, to four) heads of garlic totally, absolutely worth it.

I won’t bother trying to convince you that this is a quick kitchen task, because it's not. So instead, some tips: Lightly smush the clove with the side of a knife. (Lightly because, here, I like them to stay as whole as possible.) Dump the cloves in a bowl of warm water and peel them there. (This encourages the skins to slip off and is kinder on your fingernails.) Or, as one of my old coworkers used to do, add the garlic cloves to a container and shake the living daylights out of it. This is even more fun if there’s music playing in the background.

You could do 39 cloves or 49 cloves and, for sure, your pot roast will still be the stuff of sweater-weather dreams. But 40 just sounds better, doesn’t it?

Pot Roast With 40 Cloves of Garlic

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Ingredients

2	tablespoons canola (or other neutral) oil
3	pounds boneless beef chuck, patted as dry as possible
1 1/2	tablespoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
2	medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 1/2	pounds carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
40	peeled garlic cloves
4	cups vegetable broth

2	tablespoons canola (or other neutral) oil
3	pounds boneless beef chuck, patted as dry as possible
1 1/2	tablespoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
2	medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped

1 1/2	pounds carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
40	peeled garlic cloves
4	cups vegetable broth

Have you ever made Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic? Tell us about it in the comments!