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Credit: Photo: Alex Lepe; Food Styling: Janette Zepeda
Sohla El-Waylly is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen. The James Beard award-winning chef and New York Times bestselling cookbook author is constantly finding new ways to get creative in the kitchen. Not a believer of repeating meals, Sohla draws fresh inspo from whatever’s in her fridge to make mealtimes fun and exciting.
“Every meal feels like a Chopped mystery basket challenge. I figure it out on the fly,” she says. To help speed things up on busy weeknights, her freezer is always stocked with frozen vegetables “because you cut out all the washing and chopping, which takes forever,” she says. She also keeps ground meat, tofu, chicken thighs, and rice on hand. “You can always make something happen with those things,” Sohla says.
She also likes to experiment with different kinds of salt. “As a chef, you think a lot about salt,” she says. “I feel like cooking really starts with salt more than heat because you can make something delicious without heat, but nothing good has ever been made without salt.”
One of the cozy fall dishes we love that definitely needs salt to bring the flavors out is pot roast. But Sohla takes a unique approach to infuse salt in the dish. Here’s her secret to making the most flavorful pot roast.
Credit: Photo: Alex Lepe; Food Styling: Janette Zepeda
The Secret to the Best Pot Roast
When it comes to pot roast, slow-roasting is key to getting the meat super-tender, but Sohla says there’s one step you’re missing that will take it to the next level. “I think the key to a really good pot roast is you want to dry brine it,” she says. Dry brining is a process of salting meat to draw out moisture, and allowing it to reabsorb into the meat to tenderize it and penetrate it with deeper flavor.
“Take a sheet tray, put a wire rack on top of it, and fill it with water at the bottom. Then place your [chuck roast] on top, cover it in your brine, place it on the wire rack, and pop it in the fridge for 24 to 36 hours.”
Why does this method work? In addition to giving you more time, Sohla says that “the brine pulls some of the moisture from the [meat], which dissolves the salt on the outside into a concentrated liquid brine. Then the meat re-absorbs that salty liquid, which gets sucked back in. What that does is it dissolves some of the protein within the muscle fibers to this gel-like substance, which prevents it from overcoagulating once heated, so it stays really nice, really moist, really juicy. And of course, it seasons it to the bone,” she says. “It’s a magical thing, and really, it’s all just time.”
If you want your pot roast to come out just like hers, snag Sohla’s very own Savory Brine Blend, made in partnership with Celtic Sea Salt. (You can also use it on chicken, turkey, seafood, and more.)
Once the meat has brined, cook it with whatever other accoutrements you normally would. “I like to [add] a ton of onions underneath, which kind of cook down and create this nice little jus at the bottom of the pan,” she says.
Sohla likes to slow-roast her pot roast in the oven. “Try not to take it too far. I like it to land on medium,” she says. “I know a lot of people don’t like it when it’s pink. This is a personal choice.” To ensure the cook is just right, Sohla also recommends getting a meat thermometer. “Cook it until it’s 10-15 degrees away from the doneness you want, then uncover, brush it in some clarified butter, and blast it to get a little color on the outside.” Give it a try, and thank Sohla later.
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Dining and Cooking