Mississippi Roast, made using a rump or chuck roast, but with my own signature and minus the full stick of butter. A moist, tender and delicious roast with a wonderful gravy and a nice spicy bite.
Slow Cooker Mississippi Roast ... My Way
There's a roast blazing across the interwebs and the world of Pinterest called "Mississippi Roast," and if you google it, you'll find it everywhere. It's the roast that broke the internet.
In the beginning of making this, like most others, I had no idea where the recipe began, or even how the recipe got the name Mississippi attached to it, because best I could figure, somebody who threw it together one day must have just happened to be from Mississippi.
Well, I'm here to set the record straight on that!
One day while watching GMA, lo and behold, there was Ripley, Mississippi resident Robin Chapman on my television, claiming ownership, stating that back in the 1990s her daddy's sister (yes, that's how she said it) gave her a similar recipe for a roast beef sandwich, but that it was highly spicy, so she altered it to make it milder for her children and this was the result.
It seems that the original recipe was likely the ever popular Three Envelope Roast everybody knows and loves, but Chapman made a swap, exchanging the Italian dressing for a packet of Ranch dressing.
She says she actually never called her recipe "Mississippi Roast," just roast, but her lifelong best friend, Karen Farese, contributed the recipe to their hometown church cookbook, and Robin says that a blogger shared it from there, another blogger shared it, it made its way to Pinterest, and soon after went viral, gaining the name Mississippi Roast along the way, and making it one of the most popular recipes on the internet today.
Essentially, you add a raw chuck roast to a slow cooker, sprinkle an envelope of dry ranch dressing mix and envelope of au jus mix on top, and then you plop a full stick of butter on top, along with a 4 or 5 pepperoncini peppers, cover and cook on low for about 8 hours.
No liquid is added at all. Just the butter, which ironically in the GMA segment, was not mentioned. GMA apparently picked up on this story from an article published by The New York Times of all places.
Okay. Indeed, I am a lover of butter like anybody else, no doubt, and of course, you could add a stick of butter to just about anything and make it très délicieux, but even I think adding a full stick of butter to an already fatty chunk of beef might just be, well... a tiny bit excessive - yes, even for this Mississippian.
No offense meant to those of you who have tried the original Mississippi Roast and already love it, butter and all, but I was curious enough to give this a try. Minus the stick of butter (although you may certainly add it). And with my own spin.
And, well... if you enjoy cooking, you know how it goes. Once I got started adding my own signature to this Mississippi Roast... I just really couldn't help myself. Even Robin admits the recipe is easily modified, so I've taken her up on that!
So.... what do you get when you combine some of the elements of my Old Fashioned Pot Roast, with some from a Coca-Cola Roast, Italian Beef Roast, and 3-Envelope Roast?
The BEST roast ever, that's what!
All four of those recipes are stand-alone, incredibly fantastic beef roasts, and every one of them is in my regular rotation of Sunday Suppers, so I thought why not take some elements from each and see how it works out?
Pickled jalapenos, golden peperoncini and giardiniera are all staples in my fridge, for one, because I love those Italian Beef Sandwiches. Golden peperoncini is a mild, sweet pepper with just a hint of heat, and giardiniera - often referred to as hot mix - usually contains hot peppers such as serrano, an extremely hot chile pepper, that provides a spicy kick for this roast. I didn't want it too spicy, so I put them in whole, just to add the flavor and a nice punch of heat. Puree the veggies and add those to the gravy for extra flavor if you like the heat.
To make up for the loss of butter, I thought the recipe could benefit from some little changes that don't take much time, but add lots of flavor. So I studded the roast with garlic. Roast pictured is a 4-pound boneless chuck roast.
I seared it, and sauteed some sliced onion in the drippings.
Added some chunks of celery to the crockpot. The original recipe is a basic dump recipe, just sprinkling the envelopes over the top of the roast, but I decided to whisk together the envelopes with a little Coke and some herbs. If you don't want the sweetness from the Coke, you can sub in beef broth, beer, wine or plain water.
Add a bay leaf, a whole pickled jalapeno, 4 golden peperoncini peppers and 1/2 cup of Italian mix giardiniera. Pour the seasoned Coke in, and top with a half or full stick of butter if you want to use it.
This roast does have a nice spicy bite to it. To make it milder, leave out the jalapeno and giardiniera, but the golden peperoncini will give it just a bump of heat, though you can certainly leave those out too.
Best. Pot Roast. EVER.
And, because it's not braised in anything but its own natural fat, it's much more sliceable, where the butter braised roast tends to shred.
One note. If you do decide to try the original with the full stick of butter, just leave out the liquid and be sure to use unsalted butter. There's plenty of sodium present in the packaged mixes, so don't be tempted to add any additional salt to the roast either. Here's how to make Mississippi Roast ... my way.
For more of my beef roast recipes, visit my page on Pinterest!
If you make this or any of my recipes, I'd love to see your results! Just snap a photo and hashtag it #DeepSouthDish on social media or tag me @deepsouthdish on Instagram!
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