Supercharge Your Next Pot Roast Gravy With This Old-School Betty Crocker Tip

We're pretty fixated on retro Betty Crocker recipes lately, but we have to admit that some of them are hit-or-miss. Betty Crocker "pizza boats" from the 1950s, for example, were a bit lackluster. That doesn't stop us from taste-testing Betty's vintage recipes, however — we just approach some of the more offbeat ones with a bit of caution. Numerous social media posts and reels had positive things to say about a BC pot roast recipe that dated back to a 1970s recipe box, so you could definitely say we were intrigued. Versatile, comforting pot roast is hard to mess up, after all. Adding whammy components to the dish isn't a novel concept to us, either; we've heard of anchovy paste as an unexpected ingredient, for example. Betty Crocker's winning tip for pot roast is a lot more pedestrian, in that it requires finishing the gravy with sour cream.

Basically, you prepare a pretty bog-simple Dutch oven pot roast with a nice hunk of chuck roast, potatoes, carrots, and zucchini. The most obvious reference to the era is that the card calls for the meat to be browned with Crisco, but we can forgive that. The meat stews in its own juices for a few hours before the veggies are added to soften. The last part is what sets this recipe apart: you take the drippings from the roast, thicken them with a roux, and add a generous helping of sour cream to the pan. The sour cream adds both zest and body to the gravy, making a truly irresistible drizzle for your plate.

As is the case with almost any vintage recipe, some practical alterations can really elevate your dinner. Those preparing the Betty Crocker pot roast found that the meat achieves maximum tenderness and is fork-tender about an hour longer than the time the recipe calls for. On the other hand, the zucchini tends to get mushy if you don't wait until just before the end of the cook to throw it in. The carrots and potatoes really get the max flavor and cook fastest if they are allowed to nestle in the juices instead of resting atop the meat, so keep that in mind when you add your root veggies to the pot. It's been reported that the sour cream's flavor is very discernible in the finished gravy, so this is perhaps not the right meal for someone who doesn't already like the ingredient.

As for us, we can't help but imagine some tweaks that we'd like to add to enrich our retro Betty Crocker sour cream pot roast just a scooch more. The recipe calls for dill as the main seasoning other than good ol' salt and pepper, but we'd love to season the meat with some garlic powder and paprika. How about a few glugs of Worcestershire for extra umami, as it mixes delightfully with sour cream in other recipes? Alternatively, we've seen sour cream gravy mixed with spicy horseradish. We also can't imagine pot roast without translucent slivers of sweet onion. Half the fun of old-school recipes is bringing them into the 21st-century kitchen and making them our own.