Ina Garten's Secret Pot Roast Ingredient Comes Straight From The Liquor Cart

With her neighborly and casual appeal, Ina Garten doles out sage advice for making delicious meals that are anchored by the seasons with an eye towards being hearty, comforting, and never too fussy. Emblematic of that approach is her pot roast, and its aromas may well have neighbors drifting in from down the street. In a Food Network segment, Garten revealed that she achieves the depth of flavor in her thick and rich "company pot roast" sauce by employing none other than cognac.

Liquor has long been a pro move for flavoring and tenderizing meat, whether chicken or pork marinated in tequila, ribs marinated with bourbon, or even your grandma adding sherry to beef brisket. While cognac is Garten's play, her recipe also mentions that you could use brandy. You may be wondering what the difference is between the two. The short answer is that cognac is a type of brandy, but not all brandy is cognac. Cognac must come from a particular region in western France and has its own distillation and aging process and standards. Though aficionados may wax poetic about the nuances, for the purposes of pot roast, either will work just fine.

Ina Garten noted in the Food Network segment (via YouTube) that she builds her homey pot roast sauce "kind of like making soup," starting by sautéeing and caramelizing a rough chop of leeks, onions, carrots, and celery. Then it is the addition of some herbs and a generous amount of red wine (she prefers burgundy) and a few tablespoons of cognac that, as she says, "gives it that nice hit." Then comes her choice of plum tomatoes in puree and chicken stock, which all meld together before the seared chuck roast makes its grand re-entrance into the dutch oven. From there, the meat and sauce will do their thing in the oven for a few hours, resulting in a "meltingly delicious" dinner.

Though literally tasting the cognac is not the intent in Garten's pot roast sauce, if you are intrigued by its smell and flavors, consider pairing this spirit with other foods to truly explore its range. Classified into three broad categories by its maturity, a quick rule of thumb for cognac pairing is to lean younger, like a VS or VSOP for lighter foods such as soups or fish, and to skew older with an XO for meats or even desserts (chocolate is a wonder here). Maybe a skosh of XO with your pot roast is in order to amplify the complexity of the sauce and let the cognac linger on your palate.