Make It Monday - Crockpot Pot Roast

A Make It Monday that sounds like a lot more work than it really is but is a hearty "Meat and Potatoes" kind of meal.

For the night before, it took me about 5 minutes to get the roast in the bag with the marinade. Any time someone opened the fridge, they turned the bag over. Easy!

I happened to be up early the next morning (I often am) and at 7:00 I grabbed a pan and started the browning of the roast. While it worked I got all the vegetables in the pot. When the browning was done, I dumped all the liquid in the pot and five minutes later, into the crock it went. I actually did this on a Sunday so I could post today but I have done it on a weekday and am able to get this done and also get my children fed breakfast and lunches made, etc and get them off to school with no trouble. Even easier if I have the lunches mostly made. Morning of work takes me 15-20 minutes.

Just before 5:00 I started pulling everything out of the crock and by 5:30 had everything on the table and we were sitting down for a tasty easy meal. While the gravy was simmering I was actually making the children's lunches for the next day.

On a school day, this recipe gives me so much time to quilt during the day while having a good home cooked meal at the end. This weekend happened to be Teacher's Convention and the third week in a row that the kids had a short school week. Also, cold as you know what. Today is another Green Dot Day and the whole weekend would have been had they been in school so I couldn't send them out to play to burn off some energy.

I don't know about anyone else with kids but mine can't seem to be home for the day without interrupting whatever I am doing every two minutes for something, whether a snack, booboo, argument, whatever so I find it very distracting to my quilting. Taking this in mind, I got this all in the crock and scrubbed the house so that today, I got the kids off to school this morning with a completely cleaned house and supper for today was in the crock before they left. I'll post next week how that worked because I now have the rest of the school day to quilt, guilt free!

I forgot to take a picture at the end but honestly, it didn't look much different except the vegetables all looked a little brown from cooking in the beef broth. Everything was so soft and tender and everyone loved it and ate it up with very little complaint. The kids tried an onion but didn't like them but other than that everyone was happy!


Ingredients
1 3lb Roast boneless Beef Chuck - trimmed and cut in half
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
2 large cloves garlic - minced
1 cup beef stock (preferably homemade) or low sodium broth or consommé
1 Tbsp cracked black pepper
3 Tbsp sun dried tomato paste or regular tomato paste
2 medium onions quartered (about 3/4 pound)
1 16 oz package carrots - cut into 2 inch pieces)
16 small red potatoes halved (about 2 pounds)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 Tbsp all purpose flour
3 Tbsp water

Preparation
Night before:
Combine roast, soy sauce and garlic in a large Ziploc plastic bag; seal bag and marinate in refrigerator at least 8 hours, turning bag occasionally.

Morning of:
Remove roast from bag, reserving marinade. Sprinkle roast with pepper, gently pressing pepper into roast. Combine reserved marinade, broth and tomato paste; stir well and set aside.

Place onion, carrot and potato in a 6 quart crockpot; toss gently.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and add roast, browning well on all sides. Place roast over vegetables in cooker. Pour tomato paste mixture into pan, scraping to loosen browned bits. Pour tomato paste mixture over roast and vegetables. Cover and cook on low for 10 hours or until roast is tender.

Place roast and vegetable on a serving platter; keep warm. Pour cooking liquid from cooker into a pot. Combine flour and water in a bowl with a whisk until well blended. Add flour mixture to cooking liquid and bring to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered for 15 minutes until slightly thick, stirring frequently. Serve gravy with roast and vegetables.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.