Cold Weather Braised Beef

Fall. The garden wound down — last tomatoes, last peppers, everything yellowing and retiring for winter. I canned tomatoes for the first time. Linda came over and showed me the basics: blanch, peel, pack into jars, boil. The process is hot, messy, and deeply satisfying. Twelve jars of tomatoes from my backyard, lined up on the kitchen counter, glowing red in the afternoon light. My tomatoes. In my jars. From my garden. The self-sufficiency of it — growing food, preserving food, feeding people with food I grew and preserved — is a power I didn't know I wanted until I had it.

Linda stayed for dinner. I made pasta with the fresh-canned tomatoes — sauce from the jar I'd just filled, pasta, garlic, basil from the garden (the last of the season). The sauce tasted like August in a jar. Linda ate two helpings and said, "You're a natural." She said, "My mother taught me to can. I taught you. Someday you'll teach Harper." The chain. The garden chain, the canning chain, the food chain that isn't about predators and prey but about women in kitchens passing knowledge from hand to hand, jar to jar, generation to generation.

Blog post: "I Canned My Own Tomatoes (And So Can You)." Step-by-step, with photos, with cost breakdown. Twelve jars of tomatoes: total cost of jars (reusable) $8, total cost of tomatoes (garden) $0, total cost of salt and lemon juice $0.45. Twelve jars for $8.45, which breaks down to $0.70 per jar versus $2.49 for a store-bought can. The math is beautiful. The math is always beautiful. And the 46,000 followers who read the post are now doing the math themselves, in their own kitchens, with their own tomatoes, and the food travels, jar to jar, hand to hand.

The night Linda stayed for dinner, we ate pasta — quick, simple, just garlic and basil and that first jar of sauce. But standing there afterward, looking at eleven more jars lined up on the counter, I started thinking about what else those tomatoes could become. Cold weather was settling in, and I wanted a recipe that felt like it earned a jar — something slow, something deep, something that would let August-in-a-jar do the real work. This braised beef is exactly that: a one-pot, low-and-slow braise where your home-canned tomatoes become the backbone of everything, the way Linda’s mother’s knowledge became the backbone of mine.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 3 hours 30 minutes | Total Time: 3 hours 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 lbs beef chuck roast, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup dry red wine
1 pint (2 cups) home-canned crushed tomatoes, or one 15 oz can
1 1/2 cups beef broth
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves

Instructions

Preheat and season. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Pat the beef pieces thoroughly dry with paper towels, then season all over with salt and pepper.
Sear the beef. Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. Working in two batches to avoid crowding, sear the beef on all sides until deeply browned, about 3–4 minutes per side. Transfer seared pieces to a plate and set aside.
Build the base. Reduce heat to medium. Add the onion, carrots, and celery to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for 1 minute more, stirring until the paste turns a shade darker.
Deglaze. Pour in the red wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Let it simmer for 2 minutes.
Add liquids and return beef. Stir in the canned tomatoes and beef broth. Nestle the seared beef back into the pot along with the rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves. The liquid should come about 2/3 of the way up the meat.
Braise low and slow. Bring to a gentle simmer, then cover the pot tightly and transfer to the preheated oven. Braise for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, until the beef is fork-tender and pulling apart easily.
Finish and serve. Remove the herb sprigs and bay leaves. Taste the braising liquid and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve the beef in wide bowls with crusty bread, over egg noodles, or alongside mashed potatoes, spooning plenty of the rich tomato braising sauce over the top.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cold Weather Braised Beef — The Recipe That Earns Those Canned Tomatoes