What's The Difference Between Beef Stew And Pot Roast?

Beef stew and pot roast have a lot in common. Both dishes start with large cuts of meat with a high amount of connective tissue, which melts into a perfectly tender texture and rich broth or drippings when cooked. The recipes for both often call to sear the meat before slow-cooking. After that, the differences start to show. 

Beef stew sees meat and vegetables chopped into bite-size pieces and cooked in a single pot with ample broth. When you're making a pot roast, you keep the meat whole and braised it in a small amount of broth. Then you add vegetables in the last hour of cooking. No matter which one you choose, sides like a green bean and tomato panzanella salad and super-bacony mashed potatoes really make the main course sing.

Pop a pot roast in the oven or a beef stew on the stove, and you're setting a mood that can only benefit from a good book or familiar company. They provide hearty, warm meals in the winter months and can feed plenty of people for big gatherings. The hard part is choosing which one you want to serve.

A great beef stew starts with a well-selected cut of beef, one that hits the trifecta of tender muscle, plenty of fat, and a reasonable price tag. Butchers and chefs both prize chuck roast as their go-to meat for beef stew, but you can use other cuts, such as bone-in short ribs, beef shank, neck, sirloin, brisket, round, and oxtail. Recipes differ on how to prepare the meat before building your stew, but many suggest first seasoning the beef with salt and pepper and then searing it before cubing.

Vegetables are another key ingredient to a great beef stew, and a secret to success could be to cook veggies in two separate batches. You can use anything you like, such as potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, mushrooms, and celery. You could also use peas, kidney beans, and parsnips. You definitely want to use aromatics like shallots, onion, and garlic with herbs like oregano, thyme, and rosemary to bring out the rich, earthy flavors in beef stew. But slow cooking vegetables for too long makes them mushy, so adding extra veggies in the last hour of cooking adds texture back into the dish.

Pot roast is the centerpiece of a classic Sunday dinner. It infuses the whole house with a hearty, rich aroma as it slow cooks in the kitchen. The best beef cuts for pot roast are also the tougher cuts, like chuck, brisket, and round roast. Presentation is one of the main characteristics that differentiates pot roast from beef stew. Instead of cubing and cooking the meat in a bath of broth, you slow-cook pot roast whole in a small amount of liquid along with whole or large-cut vegetables. And you reserve the broth to use for gravy.

What really sets pot roast apart from the rest is braising, an ancient cooking method that involves searing and then slow cooking food, tightly covered, in a small amount of liquid. Braising takes seared meat to the next level by marinating it in flavors in the contained environment you create while it's cooking. For a traditional pot roast, you braise both meat and vegetables, which you can put together on the stove or in the oven. Pot roasts are traditionally made from beef, but you can also make them with braised chicken, turkey, or pork, which you season with all kinds of aromatics, like garlic, onion, rosemary, and thyme.