One of my favorite recipes for busy days when I don’t have time to cook in the afternoon is chuck roast. These roasts have a good fat profile and awesome flavor. Add a generous salad and pile of roasted broccoli and you have a complete, healthy meal even the kids will eat.
Slow Cooker or Instant Pot Chuck Roast
I don’t always have hours to spend in the kitchen each day. Crock Pot (or the slow cooking option on my Instant Pot) meals are my solution to this. A simple roast can be thrown in the slow cooker while I’m making breakfast and be ready for dinner so I don’t have to spend time cooking it later in the day.
I’m a huge fan of meal planning, but of course there are crazy days when the roast never makes it in the slow cooker in the morning. That’s when my trusty Instant Pot that can cook the same delicious meal in a fraction of the time!
How to Make a Juicy Pot Roast (in Less Time)
Chuck roast is one of the most frequently used cuts of meats for making pot roast. It contains a lot of collagen, but not fat. This means it benefits from a long cooking time at a low temperature and in some sort of a braising liquid.
Cooking collagen-rich cuts of meat for a long time breaks down the collagen into bone and joint healthy gelatin, giving the meat a tender, melt in your mouth texture. (You can read more about the health benefits of collagen and gelatin in this post.)
Crock Pot Tips
When I slow cook this recipe, I brown the meat before putting it in the slow cooker then add the broth, seasonings, and vegetables, and just let it cook until it’s time for dinner.
Instant Pot Tips
When I use the Instant Pot, I use the sauté function to brown the meat and then add the beef broth and scrape up all the flavorful brown bits stuck to the bottom. I add big chunks of onion, some garlic, and the spices to the broth and cook it all at high pressure for 60 minutes.
This may sound like a lot, but it’s necessary for a cut of meat like chuck roast that has little fat and a large amount of collagen. After a 10 minute natural pressure release I add the vegetables and cook again at high pressure for just 3 minutes, with another 10 minute natural pressure release.
I like to use yellow or sweet potatoes and big chunks of carrots in my chuck roast, but you could also use any hearty root vegetables you prefer. Parsnips, turnips, or the beets used in this recipe would all work well.

Easy Chuck Roast Recipe
Servings
Nutrition
Notes
What’s your favorite way to cook roast? Share below!
So many comments were about grass fed beef. I find the health benefits of grass fed vs grain fed with GMO corn and such to be worth the added effort. Cooking roasts in an instapot or slow cooker is not a big deal. In fact, I love the convenience of putting it in the pot and forgetting about it and the fact that it comes out more tender. Because there is less fat in grass fed, I always add olive oil to the ground meat if cooking meat loaf, hamburgers, etc. I also add ground cheese to the meat. Yum. And I cover a meat loaf with catsup or tomato sauce to add moisture also. My husband has cooked grass fed ribs on the grill. We marinate the ribs and cook on the grill at 225 for 6 hours. For steaks you could put the steaks in the instapot for about 10 minutes to tenderize then smoke or grill it to get the grill flavor. Always marinate first.
Can I use a frozen roast and how much longer do I cook it?
You can use a frozen roast in the crock pot, but you’ll probably want to cook it for longer than 2 hours before adding the vegetables or they’ll be too mushy. And then cook until it has an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees. In the Instant Pot it takes about 30 minutes per pound of frozen roast.
Your recipe looks great but as a diabetic I am very concerned about your nutrition information. Are you giving a carb count for the meat before vegetables are added? Because a medium potato is 37 grams so how could one serving be only 9?? This is unclear for those of us who actually need to know accurate nutrition. Thanks