After about four and a half hours of prepping and cooking this meal, we enjoyed a deceptively juicy chuck roast with mashed potatoes and asparagus. I used this recipe from over at Simply Recipes that I saw several weeks ago and started salivating over. Usually roast in our house is usually a crock pot deal with onions, carrots, and potatoes, which is good, but this was better.

Some substitutions were made in the preparation of this roast. As the recipe allowed, I substituted Cabernet Sauvignon for the Zinfandel, as Walmart had no Zinfandel other than white, and I didn’t want to make an extra stop. Also (please forgive me), I subsituted bacon for the pancetta, as I would have had to travel at least 45 minutes to find it. And the herbs? Dried, not fresh. Yet with all these substitutions, the roast was one of the best I ever had!

Hubby’s taste rating: 4.5 out of 5

My taste rating: 4 out of 5

Difficulty rating: 3.5 out of 5 – while this recipe took a long time to prepare, a lot of that time was spent waiting for roast to braise.