I'm not concerned about the heat penetrating: Two hours in the oven should take care of that. What I am wondering is how well the surrounding liquid penetrates, once the muscle fibers have relaxed and started soaking up liquid. That elaborate liquid concoction is there for a reason! It gets all the way into a shank sliced to be a couple of inches thick. Does it get all the way to the middle of a whole chuck roast?

I wasn't contemplating cutting the roast up into stew cubes. More like cutting it into four or six pieces.