Bottom Round Roast with onions

This is quick, easy, few ingredients and tasty!

For roast
1 tbsp olive oil
1 (4 pound) bottom round roast
salt and pepper to taste
2 -3 large onions, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup red wine vinegar

For gravy
2 tbsp flour
1 cup cold water


In the bottom of a large pot with a lid, add 1 tbsp olive oil and heat over medium high heat. Season your roast on all sides with salt and pepper and add to the hot oil. Brown all sides of the roast...be patient, wait for it to brown. You can't recreate the flavor from browning later in the cooking process so do it right in the beginning.

Once the roast is brown all over, remove the roast from the pan and add onions and garlic (I just hold the roast up with tongs and have my husband add the onions and garlic from my cutting board). Place the roast on top of the onions. Sprinkle dried thyme over the roast and onions, add bay leaf and vinegar to the bottom of the pot. Place a tight lid on the pot and simmer until roast is done...avoid removing the lid! The onions are create a lot of moisture which can eventually be made into a gravy, but if you take the lid off the steam/moisture leaves the pot and you end up with a dry roast and burnt onions.

Done is a relative term and could take varying amounts of time so what I do is use my digital oven thermometer (click link to see the type of thermometer I'm referring to). I run the thermometer probe through the steam vent on my pot lid and set the alert for 145 degrees. Once the alarm goes off (in this case about 2 hours), I remove the roast and onions then cover with foil to keep warm.

For Gravy:
Add 2 tbsp of flour to 1 cup of cold water and stir completely. Slowly add this to the juices in the pot, bring to a boil then simmer until desired thickness.

What I would change?
Not much would I change about this roast. However, I would like to try balsamic vinegar next time and we love onions so the more onions the better, in my opinion.