A smokey way to make juicy, flavor packed pot roast!
Smoked Pot Roast makes for delicious, mouth watering sandwiches
These are some of my favorite things:
- Juicy, hearty, beef
- Cheesy, meaty, sandwiches
- Smoking things in my pellet smoker
Smoked pot roast seemed like the obvious choice for a beautiful May Saturday. This dish is sometimes called a pepper stout beef. It involves smoking a chuck roast over peppers, onions, and Guinness, before shredding the beef into the vegetables to create an incredible pot roast.
I finished the meal by toasting some buns and cheese and stuffing them full of our steaming hot smoked pot roast.
Alternatively, you can serve this pot roast on a plate with sides, like moist honey cornbread.
Allan and I kept coming back for leftovers all weekend!
Pellet smoking and my smoke tubes
First off, I love my pellet smoker! I’m not endorsing a particular one, just the automatic pellet grill style.
- Mine works the same as an oven. I set a temp and the smoker heats to and stays at the temp.
- The included temp probe sends the temp of my meat back to my phone. Super convenient.
This is perfect for doing long smokes, because I can more or less go about my day as is and check in on the smoke when I feel like it.
While it’s way easier than an offset (stick burner) smoker, I find that there is a bigger challenge getting a strong smokey flavor. I think the pellet smoker is probably too efficient at maintaining temperature to generate a ton of smoke.
So I recently found out on reddit about these smoke tubes. They generate 4-5 hours worth of smoke, and once its started you don’t have to maintain it at all. To use one, fill it with smoking pellets, and light the open end on fire. I used a butane torch for this. Let it burn for about 15 minutes so that it can build up enough hot coals to keep smoking. Then blow it out, and stick the tube into your pellet grill.
Subjectively, I think it added a noticeable amount of smoke flavor without being overbearing.
Bake a cake while you wait!
A fun aspect of this recipe is that we will smoke at 350 for around 3-4 hours. If you have extra space, you can smoke all sorts of things on the side. I decided to bake a German chocolate cake! It came out perfect, moist, and delicious. I don’t think it baked long enough to impart any smoke flavor, but I plan to play with the concept in the future.
Let's make smoked pot roast!
We’ll start by salting and peppering both sides of the chuck roast. I used about a teaspoon of kosher salt per side, and then liberally coated both sides in ground pepper. Be sure to press the spices into the meat to help them stick.
Preheat your smoker to 250. If you’re using a smoke tube like I did, get it set up now. Fill your water tray, or if you don’t have one, just stick a metal tray with some water in it near the bottom of the smoker. Refill as needed to help prevent the meat from getting too dry.
Place the meat in the smoker, and set a meat probe in the center of the roast. Let the smoker run until the meat reaches 165F. Our 4lb, refrigerator temperature chuck roast took about 5 hours to reach temperature.
When your meat gets close to temperature, slice up your onions and peppers. Lay them out in a metal tray, and add the garlic, Worcestershire, and Guinness. When the meat hits 165, add the tray to the smoker by setting the meat on top of it. Raise the temperature to 350, and cook 3-4 more hours. When you reach three hours, start checking the tenderness of the meat with a fork to see how easy it is to shred.
When you can easily shred pull the meat apart with a fork, bring the tray and meat inside. Before shredding the meat, you can prepare your buns for sandwiches. I baked mine with cheese on them at 350 for about 10 minutes. While the buns toast, shred the meat into the vegetables with two forks, and then mix it all together.
Lay the meat out into the sandwiches, and enjoy your hard work! We served ours with french fries.
Recipe for Smoked Pot Roast
Smoked Pot Roast
Equipment
- 1 Pellet Smoker Or smoker of your choice
- 1 Metal tray Disposable works well
- 1 Smoke tube optional
Ingredients
- 4 lb Chuck Roast Scale to your needs
- 2 Bell peppers
- 3 Jalapenos
- 1 Onion
- 2 tbsp minced garlic
- ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
- 16 oz Guinness 12oz will work too
- Buns I prefer crusty
- Cheese Havarti or Gouda or as desired
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- ground pepper
Instructions
- Coat each side of the chuck roast with 1 tsp of salt. Then coat each side with a healthy coating of ground pepper.
- Heat smoker to 250F, and add a smoker tube if you're using one. Smoke roast until internal temperature is 165F. Mine took around 5 hours.
- Slice peppers and onions and add to metal tray. Add garlic, Worcestershire, and Guinness and mix.
- Raise smoker to 350F, and place roast in tray on top of the vegetables. Smoke for 3-4 hours, until the meat can be pulled apart with a fork.
- Slice buns and toast with cheese on them. While toasting, shred the meat into the vegetables with two forks. Mix meat and vegetables together.
- Assemble your sandwich and enjoy!
