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Three Packet Slow Cooker Pot Roast with Gravy

So, staying with my dad has meant I’ve been trying to “contribute” around the house by making the occasional dinner. (Although I’m sure my dad would prefer I would “contribute” by clearing all my crap out of the living room.) So I started off with this slow cooker pot roast. I know it seems kinda silly to cook a “cold weather food” when it’s been so hot, but this recipe is so easy and delicious and requires very little work, which is ideal since there has been so much going on lately. I’ve seen variations of this recipe pop up all over Pinterest but here’s what I did.

Start with just these ingredients…and a little water:

Cook for 8 hours on high:

And make your gravy:

Three Packet Slow Cooker Pot Roast with Gravy

Ingredients:
- 1 3lb Roast
- 1 Packet Brown Gravy Mix
- 1 Packet Italian Dressing Mix
- 1 Packet Ranch Dressing Mix
- 1 16oz bag baby carrots
- 3/4 cup of water

1. Brown the roast. You don’t technically HAVE to do this, but I think slow cooker foods taste better when you brown the meat. Make sure you get any crispy bits and drippings back into your slow cooker.

2. Place baby carrots on bottom of slow cooker pot.

3. Mix all seasoning mixes in a small bowl. Coat the roast in the powder and place in slow cooker. Pour water around the roast.

4. Cover and cook on high for 8 hours. Cardinal rule of slow cooking? Don’t open the lid. But I will admit I did open it once most of the way through so we could push the meat down a little farther into the “juice” so it wouldn’t dry out.

5. When done cooking, drain all the juicy stuff into a fat separator. Pour off the fat into a small saucepan over medium low heat. Add almost equal part flour to the hot fat and whisk to make a roux (it should look like a thick paste) and cook through. (You should see bubbles and it will start to brown in color.)

6. Once the roux is cooked, slowly add the “juice” still in your fat separator, continuing to whisk so it is smooth. Serve the gravy over the roast with the carrots.

And of course, because we’re super Asian, I served this with white rice…and it was beautiful:

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Tags: beef, carrots, dad, family, food!, home, home cooking, recipe

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Categories Recipes

Sometimes You Slump…

12 Apr

Not gonna lie. I hit a slump. A big HUGE ugly blogging slump. I know I’m not the most consistent poster. I’d be a much better blogger if I was, I’m sure. But I usually spend a lot of time thinking about future posts and what pictures to use, and feeling bad about not having posted.

Not recently though. In fact, typing this right now, required a LOT of motivation. I had let my domain registration lapse. I even started balancing my checkbook as a way to procrastinate writing…yeah. I don’t know what has been up with me, but I’ve been doing a LOT of reading lately. Reading all kinds of books. Let’s call it R&D….

But the fact that it has taken so long for me to post isn’t fair. It’s not fair to anyone who reads this blog, and it’s not fair especially to the people who made the food that makes up the content of this post much MUCH earlier.

I wanted to post earlier, but I just for some reason, couldn’t get my butt into the chair in front of my computer. I sincerely apologize, and here it is:

Some people look forward to Thanksgiving every year. Some people to Christmas. Me? I look forward to Oscar Sunday every year, because it is consistently one of the best meals that I’m guaranteed to have all year. (I’m pretty sure any posts I’ve done about Oscar Dinner in the past are tagged as such, so please feel free to check the archives.) It’s not just that the food is delicious, because it always is, but it’s that I get to spend an evening with one of my best friends, Chrissy, and her wonderful family. That they have included me in their family tradition year after year, never ceases to make me feel just a little bit extra special and I love them for it.

This year’s menu featured some items we’ve done in the past – I think Tom started off thinking that this year would be a “Greatest Hits” kind of menu, but Chrissy informed me that he kept finding new stuff he wanted to try, so there were a couple of new additions as well.

Our first course was this beautiful Corn and Lobster Chowder. I like corn, I like lobster. Can’t really go wrong here. Especially since it had a little bit of a kick – just enough to cut through the sweetness of the corn and make you go, “Oh!” and then smile…

That was followed by a “re-run” of a lovely Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Pistachios that we’d had a few years ago. I enjoyed this dish the first time, and I enjoyed it again this time. Beets might be one of my favorite root vegetables…

Along with the beets we enjoyed some expertly baked Gruyere Gougeres, which I think we may have had last year, and they were definitely a hit. This was another great item to see again, and I was lucky enough to be given a bag of yet unbaked gougeres to take home and bake and eat later…basically the next day because I wasn’t going to let them wait to be eaten!

A couple of new additions included this beautiful Yukon Gold Potato Pancake with Creme Fraiche and Caviar. Golden brown perfection…

And also, this portion of Spaghetti Squash with Fresh Herbs. Spaghetti squash is all the rage right now, and I’m not going to lie, I liked this so much, I ended up trying to duplicate this dish for dinner later that week…

We couldn’t have had an Oscar Dinner Greatest Hits without a return of the Striped Bass in a Salt Dome. This dish is not only massively impressive, but absolutely delicious. I wish I could eat all my fish prepared this way, but that seems like a lot of work. It’s just that it comes out so tender and flavorful and, well, perfect. I remember the first time Tom made this, after dinner, Scott and I literally stood over the carcass and with our fingers, picked out any remaining bits of fish flesh we could find, like ravenous vultures.

To top off the dinner, Tom traditionally does a chocolate dessert, and this year was no different. This was an Orange and Almond Chocolate Tarte.

Some other highlights of the evening…a nice dry bottle of champagne:

Winning the Oscars game…again!

And this Cream Sherry I brought…which was perfect with our chocolate dessert!

I am so blessed to count these people among my friends, and I look forward to next year!

Tags: Chrissy, family, food!, friends, home cooking, Oscars, parties, sunday funday

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Categories Sunday Funday

Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse

8 Mar

Sometimes a gal just needs chocolate.

Smooth, creamy, chocolate.

Frankly, I don’t like chocolate all that much, I don’t seek it out. I prefer fruity desserts. But like I said…sometimes a gal just needs chocolate.

This is Martha’s recipe, of course, and the girlfriends I made this for really enjoyed it. And it’s incredibly easy. And a little sexy.

Ingredients
4 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate
3/4 cup heavy cream

Directions
1. Finely chop chocolate; reserve. In a double boiler, whisk yolks, sugar, and salt until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch, 2 to 3 minutes. Off heat, quickly whisk in chopped chocolate until melted and cocoa until smooth (mixture will be thick). Cool to room temperature.

2. In a medium bowl, whip cream until soft peaks form. Whisk half of whipped cream into room-temperature chocolate mixture. Gently fold in remaining whipped cream with a rubber spatula. Divide mousse among four serving dishes. Chill at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.

3. Remove mousse from refrigerator 15 minutes before serving. Garnish with shaved chocolate.

Or, as in my case, use the rest of the heavy cream you have left over and whip up some homemade whipped cream and top with that. You can’t go wrong with homemade whipped cream.