Slow Cooker Pot Roast

I did something wrong here.  5,105 people have given this recipe an average rating of 4.5 stars.  They rave about it!  It's moist, it's delicious, it's AMAZING!!!!

My meat was tough and the gravy thin and flat.  Where did I go wrong?!  I only tweaked the recipe a tiny bit, and in ways the 5,105 reviewers had suggested!  I'm going to have to try this again.  It certainly wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't awesome.

2 cans condensed cream of mushroom soup (I used the low fat ones)
1 package of beefy onion soup mix
1 1/4 cups of water
5 1/2 pound pot roast
baby carrots
pearl onions
baby potatoes (reds, yellows, fingerlings, anything small and waxy so you don't have to worry about peeling)
button mushrooms
flour
salt
pepper
seasoning salt or garli garni
optional: Marsala

Season your flour with salt, pepper and seasoning.  Dredge the roast in the flour to get all sides coated.  Sear in a pan over high heat.
In the meantime, mix the mushroom soup, dry soup mix and water in your crockpot.
Once the meat is seared on all sides, put it in the pot.
Cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 8-9 hours.
One hour before it's done, add your veggies and allow them to cook along with the meat.

This is where I'll try things differently - I cooked my roast for 5 hours on high; next time I'm going to try the 8 hours on low.
My gravy was a bit thin, so I ladled some out into a pan to thicken up.  I added a little bit of a slurry of flour and Marsala to flavor it up a bit as well since it tasted a bit flat to me.

Overall it was good, but not nearly as richly flavored as I had imagined.  What a let down. 

Short Ribs

One of my many mailing lists (snooth.com) got me all worked up for some yummy ribs.  Especially after I watched Giada make some the other day.  Here are both recipes for two very different takes on short ribs.  There has got to be a way to do Giada's in the slow cooker, so I'll have to work on that.

Zinfandel Short Ribs
2 cups good-quality Sonoma Zinfandel
3 tablespoons butter
1 small red onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups low-sodium beef broth
4 pounds cross-cut beef short ribs, 1/2 inch thick
Steak seasoning salt, as needed

To make the sauce: In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat the Zinfandel. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes, until reduced by half. Remove from the heat and set aside. In another medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onion and garlic and cook for about 4 minutes, stirring often until the onion is tender. Add the flour and mix well until blended. Add the beef broth and the reduced Zinfandel and mix well. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, until thickened.

Prepare the grill for cooking over direct medium heat. Season the ribs on both sides with the steak seasoning salt. Place the ribs directly on the cooking grate. Cook for 5 minutes. Flip and brush with the sauce. Cook for another 5 minutes and repeat. Continue flipping and brushing for about 40 minutes, until the ribs are browned and tender. Discard any remaining sauce. Remove to a platter to serve.

Penne with Braised Short Ribs

4 pounds beef short ribs

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

5 Roma tomatoes, cut into eighths

1 cup red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 cups low-sodium beef broth

1 pound penne pasta

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Place an oven rack in the lower 1/3 of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Season the ribs with salt and pepper. In a large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven or ovenproof stock pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. In batches, add the ribs and brown on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the ribs and set aside. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, wine and mustard. Bring the mixture to a boil and scrape up the brown bits that cling to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Return the ribs to the pan. Add the beef broth, cover the pan and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours until the meat is fork-tender and falls easily from the bone.

Remove the ribs from the cooking liquid. Using a large spoon, remove any excess fat from the surface of the cooking liquid. Using a ladle, transfer the cooking liquid in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the mixture is smooth. Pour the sauce into a saucepan and keep warm over low heat. Remove the meat from the bones. Discard the bones. Using 2 forks, shred the meat into small pieces. Stir the shredded meat into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta and place in a large serving bowl. Using a slotted spoon, remove the meat from the sauce and add to the pasta. Pour 1 cup of the sauce over the pasta. Toss well and thin out the pasta with more sauce, if needed. Sprinkle the pasta with Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley before serving.

** Reader reviews add a bunch of great ideas:
- add tomato paste toward the end to thicken the sauce and add a little depth of flavor
- serve with apple and acorn squash puree versus pasta
- use pork or a traditional roast instead of short ribs
- serve the ribs whole rather than shredding them

Delicious, or horrifying?

I love my slow cooker. Love love love. I make stew and carnitas in it, and that's maybe. . . just. . . about. . it. I am torn on this recipe. I do like those little party meatballs that my Grandma used to make (you know, with the grape jelly barbecue type sauce?), and someone likens this dish to that. I don't know that I want to eat an entire roast with that flavor though, so I'm just not sure.
Thoughts?

Slow Cooker Cranberry Roast
1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix
1 (3 pound) beef chuck roast
1 (16 ounce) can jellied cranberry sauce
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Directions

Place onion soup mix in the bottom of a slow cooker. Place roast in the slow cooker, and top with cranberry sauce.
Cover, and cook 8 hours on Low.
Remove roast, and set aside. Set slow cooker to High. Whisk together butter and flour, and slowly mix into the liquid remaining in the slow cooker to create a thick gravy. Serve with the roast.

Carnitas

I always looked forward to carnitas night at my Dad and Aylene's pad. Like, cancel plans kind of looking forward. It's seriously one of my favorite meals ever and I was always really intimidated by it, thinking it was some complicated process since I know it takes all day.
Until I got a Crock Pot. A very sweet someone got it for me for Christmas (thanks Aleta!) and it will certainly go to good use.
Because I've been having CP fantasies for a while now, and Quinn and I were tasked with cooking dinner one night in Vermont and I wanted to showcase something my family does, carnitas were the obvious choice. I had no idea it was so simple! Jeezly crow, I'm going to make it once a month now I think. Especially since it can easily become pulled pork with the addition of some bbq sauce and a tasty slaw.

If you don't have a slow cooker, then please be prepared for globules of fat to go floating through the air borne on the steam produced by cooking this on the stove. Good luck.

For those of you with slow cookers, you'll thank me for how stupidly easy and delicious this is.

A big ol piece of pork - shoulder or butt, at least 3 lbs, but you can tweak that based on how many people you're feeding. Bone in or boneless, it matters not.
To get it to cook up a bit faster, chop it into smaller chunks if it's boneless.
I added a ton of garlic powder, somewhere between 1-2 tbsp for our 3lb slab, but you couldn't taste any garlic flavor on the end product, so I think I'll increase that a bit next time.
Then, I added just enough chicken stock/broth (or stock/broth and water if you end up needing lots) to almost cover the meat and set it to low for 6 hours or so, stirring once or twice.
If memory serves, it finished before the 6 hours were up, so keep an eye on things. When you can easily pull the pork apart with a fork and it's cooked through, you're in business.
Take the pork out and pull it apart with two forks and put in an oven safe container (we used one of those recyclable aluminum baking pans). Heat the oven to 350, sprinkle the pork with a generous amount of salt (half a tbsp or so), bake for 15 minutes; stir, sprinkle with another half tbsp of salt and bake for another 15 to ensure lots of crispy parts.

We serve this on tortillas with homemade guacamole, refried beans, Spanish or Mexican rice (yes, the boxed kind is fine - Zatarain's makes a great Spanish rice), shredded jack cheese, the green Tabasco sauce, and some nice, crunchy sea or Kosher salt.

* side note - we cannot actually remember how hot we cooked this so another test batch will be made this weekend. Call me if you're hungry and maybe I'll share.

**UPDATE - I cooked a 3lb piece (cooked whole, not cut into smaller chunks) for 5.5-6 hours on HIGH and it's lovely. This piece was mostly fat though, ew. Don't know if it affected the cooking or my ability to discern doneness.