Again, I will take any chance to braise something in my new beautiful Dutch oven! I was originally going to just make something really garlicky for this challenge, but then I figured anything I braise will incorporate garlic and onions and then I found this gem of a recipe that uses 3 types of bulb vegetables (garlic, fennel and onions)!

I was only able to find a 4.5 lb chuck roast at Costco but I figured what would be the problem with some extra beef. I also made the faux pas of thinking I was ordering 2 leeks but instead got 2 packs of 3 leeks 😳. Luckily I was able to pass some on to my mother in law. The rest of the ingredients were pretty straight forward. 

I've learned to buy cheap wine to cook with, so I swooped some yellow tail (which I haven't touched since late college). The problem came when I didn't want to waste the leftovers. We just bought into Mayer Hawthorne's wine and vinyl club and had done a tasting of some of the wines last night. They were freaking delicious but going from those to finishing of some yellow tail really made me realize how meh of a wine it was. I still forced myself to drink it, but we'll see how that cheap wine feels tomorrow morning (luckily no work/school due to the holiday).

Prepping all the ingredients and getting it ready to braise in the oven took me longer than the 30 minutes stated in the recipe, but that was probably in part to trying to clean and watch the kids while my husband was sick. Downside to both being teachers and having a kid in prek is that we are never a completely healthy household, but usually my husband can hold it together. That was not the case this weekend though. Just hoping he'll actually get to enjoy this food and I'm not eating 4lbs of braised beef alone.

I snagged a taste of the meet when taking it out to rest and 🤤. Why is braised meat just soooo amazing?

I was too tired and hungry to take a good pic, whoops. I served this over mashed potatoes and it was delicious. I would make this again but maybe add in sweet potatoes.

Rating: 8/10

Original recipe found here