Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast
Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast is a delicious low-carb dinner from the Crockpot, and this post has tips for Making Pot Roast in a Slow Cooker.
PIN Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast to make it later!
When my friend Bonnie told me she had made this Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast and liked it, I immediately realized I wanted to make it again just so I could take better photos! Bonnie was kind enough to say that she didn’t think the old photos were that bad, but trust me, these updated photos give you a much better idea of what a tasty recipe this is!
This pot roast is just the thing to cook on low all day in the slow cooker while you’re doing something else, and dinner will be ready when you want it. Check out Ten Low-Carb and Keto Slow Cooker Recipes with Beef for more ideas for more delicious slow cooker dinners!
What ingredients do you need for this recipe?
- boneless chuck roast, fat trimmed
- Szeged Steak Rub (affiliate link) or your favorite steak rub
- black pepper to taste
- olive oil
- onions
- beef stock or canned beer broth
- balsamic vinegar
- tomato sauce
More Beef in the Slow Cooker:
If you’re a slow cooker fan, check out Low-Carb and Keto Slow Cooker Recipes with Beef to find more tasty beef recipes like this one.
Tips for Making Pot Roast in the Slow Cooker:
I’m not a pot roast expert, but I’ve made pot roast in the Crockpot enough times to have strong opinions about how it should be done. There are three things I think are important to remember. I’m using all those tricks in this pot roast recipe. If you use a slow cooker to make pot roast, chime in with comments about your own tips for making pot roast in the Crockpot.
- First, Brown the meat well before you put it in the Crockpot because browning creates flavor.
- Second, don’t use too much liquid for any crockpot cooking, but especially for pot roast.
- Third, be sure there is plenty of flavor in the liquids you’re using. All day cooking can make foods bland if there isn’t a flavorful liquid.
How to make this recipe:
(Scroll down for complete recipe including nutritional information.)
- I used a very thick chuck roast from Costco; here’s how my roast looked after I trimmed it. (I had to cut it to get the pockets of fat and get it to fit in my Crockpot.) I save all the scraps in a container which goes in the freezer, and then use them to make beef stock.
- Rub meat on both sides with steak seasoning and black pepper, then brown the roast well.
- In a small saucepan, reduce 1 cup beef stock to 1/2 cup.
- While the meat browns, cut the onions and put them in the Crockpot.
- When the meat is brown put it in slow cooker on top of the onions, then deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup water, scraping off all browned bits, and add to reduced beef stock. Add balsamic vinegar and tomato sauce to beef stock and pour over pot roast.
- Cook on low 6-8 hours, until meat is tender.
- I drained all the liquid from the Crockpot and used a fat separator to remove the fat. After the fat is removed, reduce the liquid by about 1/3 by simmer it on the stove to make a sauce. You could thicken it, but I didn’t think it needed it.
- You might think they’d be too done from being in the Crockpot all that time, but the onions were delicious as well as the meat.
Make it a Low-Carb Meal:
This would taste great with Pureed Cauliflower with Garlic, Parmesan, and Goat Cheese for a low-carb meal.
More Tasty Beef Recipes for the Slow Cooker or Instant Pot:
Instant Pot Barbacoa Beef ~ Taste and Tell
Low-Carb Stuffed Peppers with Beef, Sausage, and Cabbage ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Instant Pot Beef Short Ribs ~ That Skinny Chick Can Bake
Green Chile Shredded Beef Cabbage Bowl ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Weekend Food Prep:
This recipe has been added to a new category called Weekend Food Prep to help you find recipes you can prep or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!
Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast
This low-carb Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast is a deliciously and easy dinner that’s made in the Crockpot.
Ingredients
- 4 pound boneless chuck roast, fat trimmed
- 1 T steak rub (see notes)
- black pepper to taste
- 1 T olive oil (depends on your pan)
- 1/4 cup water to deglaze pan
- 2 large onions, peeled and thickly sliced
- 1 cup beef stock, reduced to 1/2 cup (see notes)
- 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (see notes)
- 1/2 cup tomato sauce
Instructions
- Trim as much fat as you can from roast, and cut if necessary to fit into Crockpot.
- Rub meat well with steak seasoning and black pepper.
- Heat pan with small amount of olive oil and brown roast well on both sides. This will take a few minutes; don’t rush the browning step.
- While roast browns put 1 cup beef stock in saucepan, bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 1/2 cup.
- While the meat browns, cut the onions and put them in the Crockpot.
- When the meat is brown put it in slow cooker on top of the onions, then deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup water, scraping off all browned bits, and add to reduced beef stock. Add balsamic vinegar and tomato sauce to beef stock and pour over pot roast.
- (Or you could stop at this point and refrigerate browned roast, cut onions and mixed sauce ingredients and then put them in the Crockpot when you go to work in the morning. Don’t refrigerate them in the crockery liner. Having the meat start out cold will add several hours to the cooking time, which will be good if you’re cooking it all day while you’re away.)
- Set Crockpot to low and cook 6-8 hours, until beef is tender. The meat might be partly submerged in liquid after this much time. (If I am home, I might turn the meat once or twice.)
- Remove meat from crockpot and cover with foil to keep warm.
- Drain liquid from Crockpot and remove as much of the fat as you can with fat separator or skimmer. Cook down liquid by about 1/3 by simmering in a small pan on the stove, and serve sauce with meat and onions.
Notes
I used a standard 3 1/2 quart Crockpot (affiliate link) for this recipe.
I used Szeged Steak Rub and Fini Balsamic Vinegar but there are many good brands. (affiliate links) You can use one cup from a can of beef broth for this recipe, but be sure to reduce it by simmering until it's reduced to 1/2 cup.
Nutritional information is calculated using the entire amount of balsamic vinegar and tomato sauce that goes into the slow cooker, but you're probably not eating every bit of the sauce, so actual carb counts are slightly lower.
This recipe created by Kalyn, and it's been hugely popular on the site!
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 786Total Fat: 49gSaturated Fat: 20gTrans Fat: 3gUnsaturated Fat: 26gCholesterol: 253mgSodium: 374mgCarbohydrates: 10gFiber: 1gSugar: 6gProtein: 76g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated by the Recipe Plug-In I am using. I am not a nutritionist and cannot guarantee 100% accuracy, since many variables affect those calculations.
Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
With the fat trimmed well and served with the onions, this Low-Carb Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast is suitable for any phase of the original South Beach Diet, and it would also be suitable for most other low-carb eating plans, which may not care about trimming the fat! Balsamic vinegar and onions both have some carbs, so concentrate on the meat and go easy on the sauce if you’re making this for a low-carb diet.
Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use Slow Cooker Recipes to find more recipes like this one. Use the Diet Type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You can also Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there. Click for Slow Cooker / Pressure Cooker Recipes on my other site!
180 Comments on “Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast”
I think I may have reviewed already, but want to add a new one. We always enjoy it, but the liquid at the end has not been thick. Tonight I poured some liquid in a saucepan, just dumped in some cornstarch, and whisked and cooked til nice and thick. So yummy, my husband said it was spectacular!
Yes, that will work if you want a thicker sauce.
Can I make this recipe with a tip roast?
Thanks!
Sorry I missed this comment. I moved my site to a new web host, and the site was up but I just realized today that no comments were coming to my e-mail for NINE DAYS, yikes.
I wish I could answer that. But I have only cooked Tri Tip on the grill, haven’t ever roasted it.
Love this pot roast recipe. I cut down on the balsamic and at the end add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of xanthan to thicken, this keeps it low carb.
So glad you are enjoying it!
I love this recipe!! Has anyone had luck thickening the sauce at the end? I’ve never had much luck with reducing.
So glad you have enjoyed it. If you don’t mind adding carbs I would use the fat separator to remove fat, put the sauce in a pan on the stove and start to simmer, then mix a few tablespoons of cornstarch into some cold water and stir to dissolve, then stir into the sauce and cook until it thickens. I don’t thicken sauces much so I can’t tell the exact amounts, but you could google “how much cornstarch do I need to thicken a sauce” when you see how much liquid you have.
I love so many of your recipes, and this might be my new favorite. I had planned it for my husband and I to feed us for a few meals during this quarantine, but we were on the phone with our son and his fiancé who live nearby, and they didn’t know what they were doing for dinner. So I packed up 2 servings and they dropped by to pick it up. I also saved a portion for a single friend who doesn’t cook and is lonely and hungry during this time. Can’t wait to drop it off at her house this week. Thank you, Kalyn, for all you to to spread health and happiness through your wonderful recipes. Now I’m going to figure out a a couple of new ones to try this week!
Hi Amy, thanks so much for that nice feedback. It’s definitely a challenging time for everyone. Sounds like you are spreading a lot of health and happiness yourself, how lovely of you!
I cannot put into words how great this was. I used a rump roast because I cant stand the stinginess of a chuck roast. I did add a few carrots and a red potato for the carb eater in our house but other than that followed your recipe. Tasting the sauce whilst cooking it reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on…it really was delicious…thank you for sharing even if it was from 8 years ago!
So glad to hear you enjoyed it!
I used sweet red wine to deglaze my pan instead of water and also added 5 smashed garlic cloves to the onions. I also didn’t have enough time for a crackpot so used my induction cooktops instead at level 3 adjusting as the time went. So we will see how it goes, smells amazing tho.
Hope you enjoy! Fun hearing how you switched it up.
What is the calorie intake for this recipe?
I am currently not able to add nutritional information to the site. More than a year ago I switched my site to WordPress, which created the need to edit by hand to add more than 2,000 recipes to the preferred format for google. I have been working on that (with three assistants) for more than a year, so there is no possibility of me being able to calculate nutritional information until that project is completed. And I know that once I start doing nutrition info on one recipe people will expect to see it on every recipe, which is why I have decided to keep these two projects completely separate.
If you look after the recipe itself, I give two links (where it says “Nutritional Information”) for suggestions of two ways to get that information. That’s all I am able to do at this time.
The crockpot and Instant Pot are my new best friends during renovations! I can’t wait to try your fabulous pot roast!
Yes, I know what you mean about that! Hope you enjoy the recipe!
Such a helpful post! That potroast looks SO TENDER!
Thanks Erin; one of my long-time favorites!
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Wow, wow, wow!! This is a phenomenal recipe! Soooooooo delicious though I don’t know how low carb it is after we ate ALL the onions in one meal! 🙂
I followed the recipe exactly cooking it in my 5 in 1 pot…starting it in the slow cooker for 6 hours and finishing it off by pressure cooking because it would have still needed a couple of hours. It was melt in your mouth tender and had fantastic flavour. Thanks so much…this is going on the permanent rotation!
So glad you enjoyed it! Yes the carbs in those onions can add up.
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I want to try it now. Thank you!
Hope you enjoy!
I have some venison to use up. Do you think this recipe would work?
I've never cooked venison, so I don't think I can answer that, sorry!
This was delicious!! I used a creole seasoning on the meat, so it was kind of spicy. Small can of tomato purée. Deglazed the pan with some of the balsamic vinegar mix. Added carrots. Couldn't be better. Thank you!!
Thanks Debra; so glad you enjoyed it!
I'm not on south beach but I know a good recipe when I see one. I made this exactly as instructed until the end. The day before serving I separated the meat, onions and remaining liquid and refrigerated over night. Next day skimmed the fat off the top and with an immersion blender mixed half of the onions into the liquid to make a sublime gravy. Served the remaining onions on the side with sautéed mushrooms. May never use another pot roast recipe. Perfection. Thank you so much.
Julie, so glad you enjoyed it! And your idea of using pureed onion to thicken the sauce is quite brilliant.