The Italian Sunday roast — cooked past tender into somewhere better
Stracotto translates roughly as "overcooked", and the Italians mean it as a compliment. This is their Sunday pot roast: a whole beef roast browned hard, then lowered into red wine, soffritto and tomato and left to barely murmur for three hours until it's soft enough to serve with a spoon. The beef is only half the prize. The braising liquid cooks down into a dark, glossy sauce that Italian families ladle over pasta the next day — one pot, two dinners, and a house that smells like a trattoria all afternoon.
Ingredients
- 1.4kg Your Farmer grass-fed beef roast
- Salt and pepper to season
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 brown onion, finely diced
- 1 carrot, finely diced
- 1 stick celery, finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 375ml dry red wine
- 400g tin crushed tomatoes
- 250ml beef stock
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 sprigs rosemary
Instructions
Heat the oven to 160°C. Season the roast well, heat the oil in a heavy casserole over high heat and brown the beef deeply on every side — a solid 10 minutes. Set it aside.
1.4kg beef roast2 tbsp olive oilDrop the heat to medium and cook the onion, carrot and celery for 8 to 10 minutes until soft and sweet — this soffritto is the base of the sauce.
1 onion1 carrot1 stick celeryStir in the garlic and tomato paste and cook for a minute until it smells rich.
3 cloves garlic2 tbsp tomato pastePour in the wine, scrape the bottom of the pot well and simmer until it's reduced by half, about 5 minutes.
375ml red wineAdd the tomatoes, stock, bay and rosemary, return the beef and any juices, and bring it back to a simmer.
400g crushed tomatoes250ml beef stock2 bay leaves2 sprigs rosemaryLid on and into the oven for about 3 hours, turning the beef once halfway, until a fork twists easily in the centre.
Rest the beef on a board under foil for 15 minutes. If the sauce is thin, simmer it on the stove until it coats a spoon, then season it properly.
Slice the beef thickly — it may fall into generous chunks, which is exactly right — and serve it over soft polenta or mash with the sauce spooned over. Keep every drop of leftover sauce for tomorrow's pasta.
Appears in
Pack A & Pack C shares — Roast (~1.4kg)
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Why "Overcooked" Is the Right Idea
A lean, whole-muscle roast like the one in a Your Farmer® beef share gives you a choice: cook it carefully to pink, or cook it deliberately past that point until the muscle relaxes completely. Stracotto is the second path, and it's the more forgiving one. Once the beef is submerged to its shoulders in wine and tomato at 160°C, there's no doneness window to hit — time only makes it better. The browning step is the one place to be patient. A deep, dark crust before the liquid goes in is where most of the sauce's flavour comes from, so give it the full 10 minutes. And when you turn the beef at halfway, glance at the liquid: it should be barely moving, a lazy bubble or two at most. If it's properly boiling, your oven runs hot — drop it 10 degrees and carry on.
Swaps and Variations
Dried porcini soaked in a cup of hot water — mushrooms and liquid both into the pot — take the sauce somewhere seriously good. No wine in the house? Use extra stock with a tablespoon of red wine vinegar for the missing acidity. The same braise works with diced beef for a chunkier, ragu-style result, in which case our Sunday-sauce bolognese is its minced-beef cousin worth meeting. Serve it over polenta, mash, or pappardelle — anything that can hold sauce.
Storage and Leftovers
Stracotto improves overnight as the sauce settles into the meat, so cooking it a day ahead is a genuine upgrade, not a compromise. It keeps in the fridge for 4 days and freezes in its sauce for up to 3 months; reheat it gently, covered, on the stove. The classic second act: shred the leftover beef into the leftover sauce, warm it through and toss it with pappardelle and a handful of parmesan. In Emilia-Romagna that's not leftovers — that's the plan, and it's worth labelling the container before someone in the house discovers it first.
The roast lands in Pack A and Pack C of our grass-fed beef CSA share — reserve a share and give it the Italian treatment.
Frequently asked questions
What red wine should I use?
Can I make it in a slow cooker?
How do I know when the beef is done?
My sauce is too thin. Can I thicken it?
Does it matter if my roast is a slightly different weight?
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