Cooking with the DevOps Engineer – Pumpkin Roast

Source Recipe, please make sure to give them a page view.

Time Requirements

Grocery Store – ~45 minutes as I had to go to 2 stores

Total Working Time – 1h for me

Cooking – 6-8h

Acquire Ingredients and Tooling

Do this before you start. Double check you have everything you think you do because bad assumptions may lead to another grocery store trip. “Measure twice, cut once.”

Tooling

• Knife
• Table spoon measuring cup
  • Or just use a spoon
• Crockpot
  • You can probably google how to replicate a crock pot’s functionality with a normal pot.
    • If you do, please leave a comment on how that went with the link
• Large pan
  • Capable of cooking the meat or holding about 5 cups of liquid
• Vegetable peeler
  • Can be replaced with a good knife, just allocate a few extra minutes

Ingredients

Ingredients copied from source with a few of my own notes.

• 3 lbs rump (or chuck) roast
• Salt
• Fresh cracked black pepper
• Garlic powder
• 3 tbsp canola oil
• 13 oz cooking pumpkin
  • Also know as Sweet Pumpkin or pie pumpkin
  • Approximate height and width of 2 of my fists (see images)
• 12 oz carrots
• 1 large Vidalia onion
  • Sweet Onion if Vidalia ones are not available
• 6 garlic cloves
  • These are the individual bits inside the head of garlic
  • Clove vs Head of garlic
• 4 cups beef stock
  • 4 cups = ~33.8 oz
  • A standard Beef stock carton is 32 oz, this seems close enough
• 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp thyme
• 2 tsp paprika
• Salt

Execute

Prepare your veggies. Slice onion and cut carrots into even chunks. To cut the pumpkin, pop off the stem with a knife (blade facing away from you) and cut the pumpkin in half. Scoop out all the seeds and membrane. Cut each half in two and peel the skin off with a vegetable peeler. Cut pumpkin meat into chunks that are the same size as carrots.

• Set 3 table spoons of beef stock in a small container into the fridge to be used later
• 1 Onion
  • How to cut an onion properly video
• 12 oz Carrots
  • I have 7 ~even size carrots in my 32 oz bag so about 2 and 1/2 carrots

• Pumpkin
  • Cut off top with knife
  • Cut in half from top to bottom
    • I inserted the knife then banged the pumpkin into the counter like a hammer until it cut in half (see diagram below)
  • Scoop out seeds and membrane with spoon
  • NOTE: Seeds may be saved and roasted for another tasty snack
  • If throwing out, take care to put seeds into the trash, not down the sink

• Skin with vegetable peeler
  • This alone took about 10 minutes but I have a cheap peeler

• Cut into chunks ~ same size as carrots

Preheat a medium cooking pan over medium heat. 

Combine salt, black pepper, and garlic powder in a little bowl and mix well. Rub rump roast generously with the seasoning mixture on all sides. 

Add canola oil to the pan and sear rump roast on every side until deep golden brown. 

• Make sure to use a large pan as all the beef stock + tomato will be getting poured into this
  • I messed up and had to switch pans halfway through because mine, shown in the image below, was not large enough
• I used olive oil

Once all sides are browned, take roast out and set aside. 

Smash garlic, chop it quickly and add it to the pan. Saute just until fragrant.

• Use the side of knife to smash garlic and then mince it up into tiny bits.
  • How to video

Deglaze the pan by adding a little bit of beef stock and scraping it with a wooden or plastic spatula to lift the meat bits. 

Add remaining stock, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Carefully stir until all combined. (Use a whisk if needed.)

Add salt, pepper, paprika, and thyme. Cook until heated through.

In a little bowl, stir together corn starch with a couple of tablespoons of cold stock. Once mixed, stir corn starch mixture into the beef stock mixture. Cook until thickened and take off heat. (Taste to make sure you have enough salt and other spices.)

• This is where the stock in the fridge can be retrieved
  • I followed the directions as written and had to open a new container of room temp stock
• Make sure to really get this mixed well or you will have corn starch chunks

Spread sliced onions in the bottom of the crock pot. 

Add pumpkin and carrots all around the meat. 

Pour gravy mixture over the meat and veggies. 

Cover crock pot with a lid (do not lock it) and set it to cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Clean

Make sure to clean up now so you don’t have to later. It will be much easier to clean your pan and bowls before everything sits too long.

Eat

Now you can enjoy your hard work.