Cooking a Roast

I found a recipe online a few months back and we love it. All you need is a packet (powder) of ranch dressing, a packet of beef gravy, and a packet of Italian dressing. Place your roast in the crockpot pour in all of your three packets and one cup of water, cook all day. The roast is tender and you have gravy for rice or mash potatoes. You can always thicken the gravy if it is as thick as you like. If you are watching sodium contient I am sure you can pour half of each packet and it will still come out just as good.

I use the cooking bags. This really cuts down on cooking time! Just put in a little flour, shake the bag, put in the roast, then I put in some beef broth and you can put in potatoes or carrots or onions and tie the bag shut, poke a few slits in the top and pop it in a preheated oven. I use the Reynolds bags.

If you have a pressure cooker, you can cook it in there. We've done this sometimes even when the roast is frozen and in less than an hour you have pot roast like it was cooked all day in the crock pot.

Put the roast in your crock pot with 1 cup water and pour one pkg. of Lipton onion on top of the roast, do this right before you go to bed, it will be done when you wake in the morning. Don't worry about adding any more water, the roast will cook and get tender in it's own juice. The onion soup will make a good gravy for the roast.

pressure cooker...only takes 20 minutes

If you forgot to start it , don't have a pressure cooker, and need it soon as possible, best bet is to cut it into small serving size pieces and braise it with plenty of liquid and something acidic to tenderize it. I also use a small sharp knife to stab the meat and insert garlic slivers. Not only does this flavor the meat, the stabs allow faster cooking inside the meat, which also speeds up the cooking.

The very best way I have found is to cook it very slow at a temperature of 250-275 degrees. I usually put it in a baking dish and pour at least one can of Campbell's Beefy Mushroom Soup over it with about a half can of water. Cover with foil or a lid and bake it in the oven for about 6 hours or over night. It makes the best gravy and is very tender. Don't cook it over six hours or it will dry out.

One of these days I'm going to get brave and buy one of these pressure cookers. That's the only way to make a roast quickly, though I've never tasted one cooked this way, but I understand they are delicious. For some reason I'm still scared to death of those cookers! Otherwise, because the cuts of meats that make up most roasts (chuck, brisket, round, rump) don't have a lot of fat, like a steak does for instance, you need to braise - long, slow cooking with some kind of liquid - in order to tenderize the meat fibers. High heat and boiling toughen the meat. You can slow cook on the stovetop, in the oven or the crockpot and though it does take a bit of planning ahead, once you have it cooking you don't really have to fuss with it again until it's done. And it's sooooo good! :)

Pot Roast

3 tablespoons olive oil

5 pound chuck roast

1 tablespoon paprika

3 red bell peppers

2 onions, chopped

1 carrot, cut into chunks

5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 cup red wine OR beef stock

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

8 ounce can tomato sauce

black pepper

Heat olive oil in heavy pan over medium high heat. Sprinkle roast with paprika and brown, about 15 minutes total. Add veggies and remaining ingredients, cover and bake in a 300 degree oven for 4-5 hours, or until tender.

Enjoy!

Mary