Monday, February 4, 2013

Pot Roast...Crock Pot Style

This evening we had a really quick and simple dinner...courtesy of my crock pot!  Usually I use a boneless shoulder pot roast and they always turn out "fall apart tender" and very flavorful.  This time I decided to see how an eye of round roast would turn out in the crock pot.  Eye of round is an extremely lean cut of beef -- it looks like a beef tenderloin -- but it's not even close to being like one. As a matter of fact the difference between them is like night and day.  The tenderloin is an extremely tender cut of meat while the eye of round is a much tougher cut.  I wanted to see how one would turn out in the crock pot (as in...could the crock pot transform this eye of round into the tenderness of a tenderloin).  The answer was a big fat NO!!!  LOL  It was definitely not "fall apart tender" whatsoever.  I wouldn't say it was tough either...but it was a bit drier than what you would typically expect to get out of a crock pot.  I didn't follow any specific recipe...just sort of added things as I went along.  I diced an onion and minced some garlic and placed it in the bottom of the crock pot.  I then sat the roast on top and seasoned it with some salt, pepper, paprika and thyme and  dumped a can of diced fire roasted tomatoes over the top which took me all of like 5 minutes to do.  I covered it and then cooked it for about 9 hours on low.  When I got home, I removed it from the crock pot and sliced it into thin slices and then topped it with the herbed chunky tomato "gravy". If I were to rate it against other pot roasts that I have made, I would probably give it a 7 out of 10. It wasn't tough (you could cut it with a fork)...but it wasn't going to fall apart either. While this roast made nice neat looking slices...personally, I am more of a "chunky, fall apart, not so pretty" pot roast kind of gal. I served the pot roast with the leftover cheddar topped broccoli from last night. Basically all I had to do was "slice and serve" for dinner tonight -- how awesome is that? I snapped a couple pics for you to see. Enjoy!

Voila!
BOOM!

6 comments:

Natasha Reed said...

That broccoli cheddar bake looks deeelish. What's the recipe for that?

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi Natasha -- I steamed fresh broccoli and then drained it, tossed with butter, Parmesan, shredded cheddar, salt & pepper and put in a casserole dish and topped with more shredded cheddar and baked in the oven at 400 for about 10-15 minutes until the cheese melted and browned a little bit.

Kath said...

I agree with Natasha! That broccoli looks fantastic!

Patricia said...

That's what I love about your writing! You always tell us the truth! Now this recipe you made today is the kind of pot roast my guy would like--i'm more like you - the fall apart tender kind. He hates chuck and I love it. Looks delish. I wish it was on my table now!. It's fishsticks and coleslaw here. Although I am using purple and regular and making homemade tartar sauce and homemade coleslaw dressing!

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Thanks, Kath! :-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi Patricia! Thanks! Believe it or not -- your dinner of fish sticks and coleslaw sounds pretty good to me right now! I loooooove coleslaw. Do you follow a coleslaw dressing recipe or just add and taste as you go? I've got some stuffed peppers in the oven about ready to come out -- this is the first time I've made them in the oven and not in a dutch oven on the stove -- will be interesting to see how they turn out! :-)