The Best Meat for Pot Roast

The Best Meat for Pot Roast

Pot roast is a classic American dish that many think of as the ultimate comfort food. A perfect pot roast is tender and melts in your mouth, all the while filling it with rich, beefy flavor. How do you choose the best meat for pot roast? There are many options, but we’ve found a specific cut, all but guaranteed to make your next pot roast memorable.

The best meat for pot roast is a beef cut with abundant connective tissue, like chuck roast. Although “connective tissue” is not an appetizing word, it’s important because it contains collagen which creates that tender texture that melts in your mouth.

If you cook a piece of meat high in collagen by searing or quick cooking, it can be tough since there’s not enough time to break it down. When braised with liquid at a lower temperature, the slow cooking melts the collagen and becomes velvety and tender. 

This is what makes pot roast fork tender and also creates the luscious broth that envelopes your roast and vegetables with silky flavor.

Which beef cuts high in collagen?

Two of the beef cuts with the most collagen are oxtails and shanks. They will break down when braised, but these smaller cuts are not ideal for pot roast.

Other cuts with higher collagen content are chuck roast, brisket and the bottom round. Any of these will work for pot roast.

What is the Best Meat for Pot Roast?

When shopping at your local grocery store, you might find a cut labeled “pot roast”, but there’s not a specific cut for this dish. As noted above, collagen content is important to consider, but other factors come into play:

• Boneless – simplifies preparation and serving.
• Muscle structure – look for tough cuts that hold up during slow cooking but shred easily when cooked.
• Internal fat or marbling – fat equals flavor and adds to the final tenderness.

While you can use any number of beef cuts for pot roast, the chuck roast is our top pick for this hearty dish. 

Chuck roasts are boneless, have a naturally tough texture, a high collagen content and sufficient internal marbling to enhance the final dish.

SRF Black® Wagyu chuck roast is an easy way to elevate pot roast to an entirely different level of deliciousness. This boneless roast is cut from American Wagyu beef which has a higher level of marbling than USDA Prime. While pot roast is a simple dish that can be made with lower grades of beef, American Wagyu infuses pot roast recipes with an increased level of marbling and rich beefy flavor.

Pot roast is an American beef dish made by slow cooking a usually tough cut of beef in moist heat. Tougher cuts such as chuck steak, bottom round, short ribs and 7-bone roast are preferred for this technique. These cuts are American terms; different terms and butchering styles are used throughout the Anglophone world and beyond. While the toughness of the fibers makes them unsuitable for oven roasting, slow cooking tenderizes the meat as the beef imparts some of its flavor to the water.

Browning the roast before adding liquid is an optional step to improve the flavor. Browning can occur at lower temperatures with a longer cooking time, but the result is less intense than a high temperature sear. Either technique can be used when making pot roast. The result is tender, succulent meat and a rich liquid that lends itself to gravy.