Forget Boring Potatoes — Revamp Your Pot Roast With A Sweet Autumn Swap

Pot roast is an excellent large format meal that many can recreate without so much as glancing at a cookbook or even an internet recipe. But that familiarity also makes it easy to dig oneself into somewhat of a pot roast rut that not even the best chuck roast selection can remedy. See, the average potatoes, carrots, and onions that accompany a typical pot roast are terrific enough to remain the standard, but there is still room for the occasional switcheroo. Using sweet potatoes instead of the usual spuds will give your pot roast a particularly autumnal flair for the very season that's, frankly, the best for this comforting dish to begin with.

Sweet potatoes seem to taste like fall in part because they already factor into some famed topical preparations, like the tasty sweet potato pie. The caramelized, nutty notes that can arise from a sweet potato, not to mention its rich orange color, are pretty reminiscent of October and November. So chopped and dropped into your usual pot roast, these distinctive tubers add a tasty, timely flair to the mix. You might just want to add them in a little bit later than you would the usual paler variety, and consider some spice and seasoning additions to further amplify the veg.

You can easily find plenty of pot roast recipes that use sweet potatoes the same way you'd use the white kind, by adding them right with the beef for the whole cook time. And that will most likely turn out just fine, or, at worst, leave the sweet potatoes a little more yielding than some might like, being that they're quicker to soften in a pot roast. Simply adding the sweet potatoes in a little later, say about halfway through, can stave off this fate. You could also, of course, separately steam, roast, saute, or otherwise cook your sweet potatoes many different ways to your more precise liking and then add them to the pot roast just before serving. That would, however, eliminate the one-pot element of your menu planning.

You can also have fun with some additional fall flavors. Sweet potatoes love things like the cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger that also signal autumn, so you may want to factor a teaspoon or so of those into your more traditional pot roast seasonings. Pot roast can also provide a fair share of sides in and of itself, but there are some classic accompaniments that you can make more autumnal. Green beans can easily be transformed into a more seasonal casserole, bread can benefit from a pumpkin butter spread, and Brussels sprouts are great with a maple glaze any time of year, but especially here and now with your sweet potato pot roast.