Meat & Potatoes

I tried making a pot roast in the slow cooker and ran into a couple of issues - both of which stem from a fundamental problem in the world of cooking: recipes are geared towards people who already know how to cook.

My issues:

1. The recipe calls for 5.5 lbs "pot roast." So I was in the meat department of my local grocery store looking for "pot roast," but such a thing does not exist. They had rump roast, chuck roast, and tri-tip roast, but no "pot roast." I was just about to reach for my phone and call my mom to ask her which I should buy (in retrospect, funny how my first thought is to call my mom and not ask the butcher who was standing 30 ft. away) when I noticed that the chuck roast was on sale for $1.99/lb. So I bought that.

2. The recipe instructs to cook on high for 3-4 hours but gives no guideline for determining when the roast is adequately cooked. After 3 hours there was still a lot of blood coming out when I poked at it. After 4 hours, I thought it looked done. Fortunately, Blake was over and he remembered something about meat needing to have an internal temperature of 160-degrees. I managed to find a meat thermometer and my roast was only 140-degrees. So we put in The Godfather II, let it cook another hour (for anyone who is counting, we're now at 5 hours) and it just barely reached 160-degrees. Unfortunately, we found that it was overcooked.

So the meat was tough and fatty (should I have used something besides chuck roast?) and the gravy was way too salty (I suggest using only half of the onion soup packet). But I had added some red potatoes and mushrooms and they were quite tasty.

At the end of the day, I don't think I'm a meat & potatoes kind of girl.

Awesome Slow Cooker Pot Roast

Submitted by: Brenda Arnold Rated: 5 out of 5 by 2992 members

Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cook Time: 8 Hours

Ready In: 8 Hours 10 Minutes Yields: 12 servings

"This simple pot roast makes its own gravy in the slow cooker."

INGREDIENTS:

2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup 1 (1 ounce) package dry onion

soup mix 1 1/4 cups water 5 1/2 pounds pot roast

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a slow cooker, mix cream of mushroom soup, dry onion soup mix and water. Place pot roast in slow cooker and coat with soup mixture.
2.	Cook on High setting for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low setting for 8 to 9 hours.

Nutrition Info (per serving)

Calories 435 (52% from fat) | Protein 45.6g | Fat 24.5g (sat 9.1g) | Carbohydrate 5.2g | Fiber 0.3g | Cholesterol 127mg | Iron 4mg | Sodium 663mg | Calcium 27mg