06 August 2008

Low Brow Crock Pot Roast

Its hot. I'm struggling to keep the apartment under 80. It was supposed to be even warmer today but the predictions didn't pan out. I figured this was the perfect day to make a crock pot meal. It doesn't heat the house too much, and although a little heavier of a meal than I really needed to eat tonight, it was a success.
I almost lost my favorite crock pot roast recipe, it was written on a tiny piece of paper that was once tucked into a cookbook. It was no longer there.
I finally found it after taking all the cookbooks out of the cookbook cabinet, it was stuck to the back of the cupboard.
I decided to post the recipe here so I don't have to rely on my little piece of paper anymore.
Try it out sometime if you have a crock-pot. Perfect in the winter, tasty in the summer too.
I like it best with a big chunk of beef roast, but tonight I used pork shoulder because it was available on the cheap this week. The roast should be around 3-4 pounds, or pretty much fill the whole crock pot.
Mix all of the following together in the pot the night before and refrigerate it so all you have to do in the morning before you go to work is turn it on. The marinading isn't mandatory, its just convenient. You can throw it all together and start cooking straight away if you want and get the same results.

Here's the juice:
Mix up in the crock pot
1 Packet of brown gravy mix (Hain makes my favorite one) and
1/2 cup of water.
Stir it up with a whisk until all the powder dissolves.
Then add
1/4 cup of fine tomato ketchup
1/4 cup of "Three Buck Chuck" Shiraz (or your favorite inexpensive full-bodied red wine)
2 tbsp of dijon mustard
1 tbsp of Worcestershire Sauce
1/8 tsp of garlic powder (or a couple cloves of crushed garlic if you feel so inclined)
Some little carrots and potatoes if you want

Salt and pepper the meat to your liking, remembering that there's quite a bit of sodium in that juice you're getting ready to dunk the meat into for the next few hours, so go easy on the salt. Refrigerate overnight if that works out best for you.
Cook on Low for 7-9 hours, or until you stick a fork into the meat and it all falls apart.

Enjoy.

*Not my crock pot by the way, just a picture borrowed from abmatic's photostream. However Mom still uses her green one that looks just like that one.

1 comment:

Slammin' Sam said...

dude, sounds yummy. i saved it to my google docs to try later.