Now that the holidays are over and we’re all working towards our Farm Fresh New Year’s Resolutions, how about preparing our Simple Slow-Cooker Pot Roast Recipe made with locally-raised grass-fed beef shoulder? A slow-simmered all-in-one meal sounds perfectly tantalizing after the fuss of the holidays, and using all local ingredients from our farmers’ market makes it a smart and healthier meal choice.

Beaverdam Creek Farm beef shoulder roast with turnips, carrots, and shitakes; mashed Beaverdam Creek Farm sweet potatoes; and pan-browned Delvin Farm brussel sprouts.

For this recipe, we chose a grass-fed Beaverdam Creek Farm beef shoulder roast that melted in our mouths after a morning in the slow-cooker. Beaverdam Creek Farm raises their cattle without antibiotics or growth stimulants and feeds them a diet of natural green grass, ensuring a happy herd and a healthful cut of meat for you and your family. Beaverdam Creek Farm offers a wide selection of freshly-harvested produce as well, so we grabbed a few sweet potatoes to accompany our hearty meal as a side dish.

Grass-fed Beaverdam Creek beef shoulder has the perfect amount of marbling, making it an excellent selection for pot roast.

To begin our pot roast, we started with two very important s’s — salt and searing! Liberally sprinkling salt and pepper to both sides of our shoulder roast and searing it in a hot skillet ensures beautiful browning and maximum flavor. This step can always be skipped, but why not go the extra mile when the remainder of the recipe is so simple?

Browning your roast in a skillet adds depth of flavor.

While our roast browned, we turned to our vegetables.  We opted for staples such as bright orange carrots and tasty turnips from Colvin Family Farm and meaty shitake mushrooms from Bloomin’ Shrooms, LLC, that we sliced and added to really boost the earthiness of the roast.

Carrots and turnips from Colvin Family Farm are fresh and seasonal, and Bloomin’ Shrooms, LLC, shitakes are plentiful at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Begin building your roast by slicing 1 large onion and adding it to the bottom of your slow-cooker, then place the Beaverdam Creek Farm shoulder roast on top. Next, nestle in the carrots and turnips, and top the whole shebang with shitake mushrooms.

Now comes the question of liquid. We prefer to add about 1 cup of liquid to our pot roasts, because — you guessed it — we love to make gravy! Adding a bit of liquid results in more juicy goodness that can be whisked into a roux and simmered down after the pot roast has finished. (We added 1/4 cup of red table wine and 3/4 cup of beef stock.)

Set your slow-cooker to 4-6 hours for a 2-3 pound roast and 8-10 hours for a 3-5 pounder. If possible, stir the contents in between once or twice to ensure the top of your roast and all those lovely shitakes so not dry out.

Once your pot roast is tender and succulent, remove the meat, carrots, turnips, and shitakes with a pair of tongs, and strain and reserve the juices. Create a pan gravy by cooking 1 tablespoon butter or vegetable oil with 1 tablespoon flour in a skillet and then whisking in the juices until a smooth glistening gravy comes together.

Silky pan gravy made from Beaverdam Creek pork shoulder roast.

To accompany our pot roast, we thought we’d select one of the many green vegetables available right now during our winter market. Both Delvin Farms and Kirkview Farm have beautiful brussel sprouts that we pan-browned with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Instead of traditional mashed potatoes, we roasted our Beaverdam Creek sweet potatoes whole in the oven at 400 degrees for 1 hour until they were gooey and candy-like. We prefer to mash these gems as-is, but they’re delicious with a little Hatcher Family Dairy cream and brown sugar if you like them extra-sweet, or plenty of salt and pepper for a more savory sweet potato mash. Voila!

With every pot roast the question of leftovers arises, and with all the skilled bakers at the Franklin Farmers Market, a drippy, crusty sandwich is the way to go. We love to spoon our succulent pot roast and creamy pan gravy onto loaves of freshly-baked Jones Mill Farm Italian bread. Top with a wad of fried onions and chopped leftover brussel sprouts, and you’ve got a second delicious meal of leftovers that is just as savory as the first.

Build a crusty pot roast sandwich on freshly baked Italian loaf from Jones Mill Farm.

Simple Slow-Cooker Pot Roast Recipe

1 Beaverdam Creek Farm beef shoulder roast

2-3 Beaverdam Creek sweet potatoes

1 pint Delvin Farms or Kirkview Farm brussel sprouts

1 pound of mixed carrots and turnips from Colvin Family Farm

1 quart Bloomin’ Shrooms, LLC shitake mushrooms, sliced

1 large onion

1 loaf Jones Mill Farm Italian loaf

1/4 cup red wine (optional)

3/4 cup beef stock (optional)

1 tablespoon butter or oil for gravy

1 tablespoon flour for gravy

olive oil

salt and pepper

Numerous varieties of cool-season brassicas are in abundance right now at the Franklin Farmers Market, and in order to satisfy our cruciferous craving, we’ve prepared a marinated roasted cauliflower recipe that was inspired by Los Angeles-based chef Ben Ford. Cauliflower has an uncanny ability to take-on a multitude of flavors, and when roasted, its natural sugar caramelizes and creates a sweet, satisfying crunch. In fact, roasted cauliflower is one of our most popular cool-season dishes among our farmers and market customers, and we thoroughly believe this piquant variation is destined to please.

Orange ‘Cheddar’ variety and purple hued varieties with classic snow white cauliflower.

Cauliflower is at its peak during the fall months in Tennessee when our farmers are harvesting it fresh in the field. When cauliflower is grown locally and brought to straight to market, the flavor is clean and the vegetable maintains its turgidity and crunchiness. Beautiful heads of cauliflower can be found in classic snow-white, and also unique orange and purple-hued varieties peppered throughout our market stalls.

Roasted purple cauliflower steaks marinaded in Herban Market extra-virgin olive oil, olives, and herbs.

Cauliflower, like its cabbage and collard cousins, is particularly tasty bathed in bright tangy flavors. We think that’s why chef Ben Ford begins this roasted cauliflower recipe with a marinade of briny olives and tart lemon. A quality extra-virgin olive oil is the base for this marinade, and we like the wide selection available at Herban Market right here in Franklin. (tip: Herban Market has over 60 olive oils and balsamic vinegars ready to be sampled. If you’re curious about which olive oil would pair best with your roasted cauliflower, ask any of the knowledgeable members on staff to help you make the best selection.)

Beaverdam Creek Farm fresh garlic and fresh herbs from Bloomsbury Farm.

We chose fresh herbs from Bloomsbury Farm and garlic dug straight from the ground at Beaverdam Creek Farm. We also decided to slice our cauliflower heads into “steaks” instead of florets so that we could serve our marinated roasted cauliflower as either an entrée or side.

A high oven temperature is needed to produce efficiently caramelized edges on cauliflower. The sweetness plays with the briny tartness of the marinade, creating one of the most flavor-intense and palate-pleasing roasted cauliflower recipes our farmers’ market has tried. Bon appetite!

Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Olives and Herbs (adapted from chef Ben Ford’s Roasted Cauliflower)

Ingredients:
4-5 pounds Delvin Farms cauliflower (about 2 large), core intact, sliced into 1 1/2 inch steaks)
½ cup Herban Market extra-virgin olive oil
6 cloves of Beaverdam Creek Farm garlic, peeled whole clove
¼ cup capers
½ cup olives, lightly crushed and pitted
½  tablespoon fresh chopped Bloomsbury Farm thyme
2 tablespoon fresh rough chopped Bloomsbury Farm rosemary
1 lemon, large diced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method:

Create marinade for the cauliflower by combining thenextra-virgin  olive oil, garlic, capers, lemons, and olives in a saucepan, and heating it over low heat. Cook slowly for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until everything has softened and broken down and is cooked. Mix in herbs and set aside. (tip: Loosen with a little extra olive oil if it’s too stiff. You want it easily fall off the spoon.)

Blanch cauliflower steaks in heavily salted boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove and let excess water drain. Cover cauliflower steaks with the marinade as they cool. Marinate for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place cauliflower steaks on foil-lined baking sheets and roast until a butter knife inserts easily into the center, about 30-35 minutes.

This Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market, find stalls filled with produce harvested fresh for Thanksgiving — tender greens like turnips and collards to sauté with onions and local bacon, sweet potatoes for casserole that have been recently excavated from the cool fall soil, and turnips and crunchy cauliflower to roast and serve alongside your juicy turkey. Fall produce is bountiful and fresh for Thanksgiving this Saturday at our farmers market.

If anything captures the feeling of Thanksgiving, we think it is the smell of fresh sweet potatoes roasting in the oven. The aroma permeates throughout our homes and gives us a cozy feeling that only exists around the holidays. The Franklin Farmers Market offers an array of different sweet potato varieties, from the giant ‘Beauregard’ to white Japanese varieties to the copper-skinned ‘Carolina Ruby.’ We like to roast our sweets on a high heat to ensure extra caramelization (between 400 to 425 degrees) for an hour. After they’re good and toasted, slowly peel back the skin to reveal the bright-orange flesh bathed in a burnt sugar coating. Find your favorite variety of sweet potato fresh for Thanksgiving casserole this Saturday.

Why make the same side of potatoes this year when you can mix up your mash with roasted cauliflower and turnips? These two vegetables grow sweeter when roasted, and when pureed with butter and a little cream, you have a new variation of traditional mashed potatoes. Find turnips and interesting varieties of orange and purple organic cauliflower at the Delvin Farm’s booth this Saturday.

If there’s one thing our farmers’ market has in aplenty, it’s tender fall greens harvested fresh for Thanksgiving. We like to braise collards and kale in chicken stock with onions and bacon from West Wind Farms. Because a side of dark green collards that are fresh for Thanksgiving is a must for every Southern holiday menu.

We at the Franklin Farmers Market know you’re planning one heck of a Thanksgiving this year, so we’re here to help with one of our favorite holiday recipes  — Southern Cornbread Dressing baked in your favorite cast iron skillet. Right now, our market is teeming with all the Thanksgiving staples you will need to create the freshest local Thanksgiving feast —  freshly-dug sweet potatoes for casseroles, apples and pumpkins for pies, heirloom cornmeal for dressing, locally-raised bacon, freshly-harvested herbs, and all the fall vegetables for a smorgasbord of sides. So grab that cast iron skillet and get it good and hot, because this Southern cornbread dressing recipe is not one to pass-up.

Beaverdam Creek cornmeal, Paradise Produce celery, Bloomsbury farm parsley and thyme, Evans Produce onions, West Wind Farm hickory-smoked bacon.

What makes this Southern cornbread dressing from the Franklin Farmers Market so unique and delicious is the stone-ground heirloom cornmeal from Beaverdam Creek Farm. This cornmeal produces the freshest cornbread with the most tender crumb that we have ever tasted, and adds such a lovely texture to our Southern cornbread dressing.

To begin, fry 12 ounces of West Wind Farm hickory smoked uncured bacon in your favorite cast iron skillet. Remove bacon, crumble and set aside. Reserve all drippings in a separate bowl except for 2 tablespoons, and place skillet with bacon grease in a heated 400 degree oven.

West Wind Farm hickory smoked bacon frying in a cast-iron skillet.

Next, build the cornbread batter: Combine 2 cups Beaverdam Creek Farm stone-ground cornmeal with 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon sugar (optional!!!!) and whisk together with a fork. Next, add the wet ingredients:  Crack in 1 farm egg, 1/4 cup of either bacon drippings or vegetable oil, and 1 1/4 cup of buttermilk. Fold all ingredients together until just combined (batter should still be lumpy). Quickly and carefully remove hot skillet from oven and pour in batter. If the batter sizzles, you know you are doing it right! Bake for approx 20 minutes, or until cornbread is golden brown. Top with Hatcher Family Dairy sweet cream butter, and remove from skillet to cool. Add two more tablespoons of West Wind Farm bacon drippings to skillet and set aside.

For the vegetables and herbs, we begin with a knob of butter or olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add two large diced sweet onions from Evans Produce to the pan with a pinch of salt and sauté until onions begin to brown (approx 5 minutes). Then add 1 1/2 cup small-diced fresh celery from Paradise Produce, and sauté until vegetables are tender. Then, add 1/4 cup of finely-diced fresh herbs from Bloomsbury Farm. We chose sage, rosemary, and thyme. Once veggies and herbs are brown and soft, remove from heat and add to a large mixing bowl. Place skillet and bacon drippings into oven to heat.

Finally, crumble the cornbread on top of the vegetable, add crumbled West Wind Farm bacon, and mix to combine. Next, add 2 cups of chicken or turkey stock. Taste and season dressing with salt and pepper before adding 2 farm eggs and combining. Remove skillet from oven and pour-in dressing. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake until the top is browned and the center is spongy. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Cast Iron Southern Cornbread Dressing

2 cups Beaverdam Creek cornmeal

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar (optional!!!)

1 1/4 cup buttermilk

1 large farm egg

1/4 cup either West Wind Farm bacon drippings or vegetable oil

2 large sweet Evans Produce onions, small-diced

1 1/2 cups small-diced celery from Paradise Produce

1/4 cup chopped fresh Bloomsbury Farm herbs

olive oil

Hatcher Family Dairy Butter (optional)

2 cups chicken or turkey stock

2 farm eggs

salt and pepper