Mr. Mom Essentials: Pot roast in the Crock-pot

One of the first tools I got when I became Mr. Mom was a crock-pot. You won't be cooking a lot of fancy dinners in one, but it sure is nice to have something working on dinner all day while you take care of other business!

The first one we got matched our Corelle Shadow Iris dishes. Since then, I've since picked up four more (although maybe it's just three, because I'm counting the double my daughter gave me for Christmas as two), and although I haven't had occasion to use all of them at once yet, I will.

Anyhow, I like roast beef. In my younger years I'd run over to Hooley's (the local supermarket, with a great meat department) buy a roast, put it in a pan in the oven, (over)cook it until it was gray, tough and dry, then slice it thin to make sandwiches. My only defense is that I didn't know any better.

While the crock-pot still gets you into the "well done" range, the meat is always moist and tender, and you can start with the cheapest roast you can find and still get compliments from your wife and kids on the results.

Here's how I make mine:

I get a chuck roast or a rump roast in the 2-3 pound range. I shop the sales and freeze them when I find them, so there's always one in the freezer if I'm stumped for dinner or know I won't have time to cook something later in the afternoon. And yeah, you CAN you nicer roasts, but to be honest, why would you? Save those for cooking in the oven when you want to put a nice medium-rare chunk of beef on the table and impress company.

My ingredients are pretty basic: onions, garlic, season salt, paprika, black pepper and a can of beef broth.

I use red onions, but it really doesn’t
make lot of difference what kind you
use. Sometimes when I’m in a hurry
I use the chopped frozen ones. Heck,
I’ve even used the dried ones!

First I chop the onions and put them in the bottom of the crock-pot. I'm using my original crock-pot here because that's my tradition. I like tradition. It's also just about the right size for the 2-3 pound roast.

Next, I slice up some cloves of garlic, then stab the roast a dozen or so times with my sharpest, pointiest knife so I can spike the garlic into the meat. (This can be a therapeutic step if you're have any unresolved frustrations, find yourself with a sharp implement in hand, but want to avoid any activities that could get you into trouble with the law. A lot safer than going all West Side Story in an alley someplace.)

Maybe someone with
professional training (or at
least a more experience)
can tell me why cooking
fat side up seems to work
better. In a regular oven
I can see how it would
protect the meat if you’re
cooking at a higher heat,
but that doesn’t really
apply in the crock-pot.

Do both sides, sprinkle liberally with the season salt and conservatively with the paprika and pepper. Then the roast goes into the crock-pot on top of the onions, fat side up. Pour the beef broth down the sides.

This time around I had some nice red potatoes from the local farmers' market (Carper Sweet Corn & Produce, out of Rutland, SD) that I cut up, seasoned and put on top.

You also can put in carrots, pearl onions or whatever other vegetable you might enjoy cooked alongside a roast and soaking up the flavors all day.

Then cover the crock-pot, walk away and let it cook. I set mine on low and cook all day if I put it together before I go to work in the morning. If I cook one of these on the weekend and get started later in the morning, it goes on high.

When it's done,  I take the potatoes and some of the onions and garlic and mash them together with some milk in a separate bowl and the roast goes onto a serving dish or cutting board.

Then I strain the solids out of the remaining liquid to make the gravy. Usually I have about 3 cups of liquid. I heat that to boiling in a saucepan and add about 3 Tbsp. of corn starch dissolved into about half a cup of cold milk, pour it into the boiling liquid and whisk the daylights out of it until it thickens up. Then off the heat and into the gravy boat.

We always have this with sliced beets—most often Harvard or pickled. I probably should check the quality of my photos before we start eating, but here's how it came out yesterday: