What if I told you that you could prepare a great meal in less than ten minutes, pop it into the slow cooker and be a hero tonight without worry or extra work?

Everyone is enamored with their instant pots, but I am old school. Let’s pull out that slow cooker/crock pot, fill our homes with delicious smells all day and enjoy a marvelous meal in the evening.

We all have special meals we go to when we need comfort. When it’s cold outside, most of us crave things our mothers and grandmothers used to warm us up. Grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of tomato soup, chicken and dumplings, and pot roast all make people nostalgic. Think about this last week. We’ve had frigid temperatures, schools and businesses closed and families getting cabin fever. This is the time to break out your slow cooker, give yourself a break and give your family some food memories of their own.

Let’s start with some basic rules for slow cooking. If you want extra flavor, you will have to brown your meat before you put it in the slow cooker. If you like crisper vegetables, you will need to add them later in the cooking process. If you like a thick gravy, you may have to whisk in a bit of roux or diluted cornstarch to your sauce just before serving time. But generally, slow cooking means just that—put everything in the pot and let it go for a few hours or all day, then enjoy a fabulous meal at the end.

This week, we found a sale on beef roasts and it made for several wonderful warm meals, starting with a pot roast with all the fixings. With most of the leftovers we made beef stew and with the very last bits, we made a luscious tortellini soup. Here’s how I made that slow cooker work so I didn’t have to do much of anything this weekend.

Slow Cooker Pot Roast

Ingredients

One 2-4 pound beef roast (you can use sirloin, rump or round roast) 

4-5 Tbs. flour (enough for dredging the meat)

1 tsp.  garlic powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp.  black pepper

1 Tbs. Olive oil

4-5 big carrots, peeled and cut into 2 inch lengths

3 onions, peeled and quartered

2 stalks of celery, cut into 1 inch lengths

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed

8-10 small red potatoes, washed and halved

4 cups beef stock

Optional herbs and spices:

1 tsp. each dried thyme, rosemary and oregano

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp.  black pepper

Directions

Mix the flour with the garlic powder with ½ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper.  Dredge the roast in the flour mixture.  Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Brown the meat on all sides in the skillet, then place it in the bottom of a slow cooker.  Add the vegetables, herbs and spices and pour in just enough stock to cover it all.  Turn the slow cooker on and cook for four hours on high or six to eight hours on low.  To serve, remove the roast to a serving platter.  Surround it with the vegetables.  The stock should be fairly flavorful by itself, but check and season it as you like.  If you want a thicker gravy, you can mix 2 teaspoons of cornstarch with water and whisk it into the sauce and keep stirring until it is thickened OR whisk in a cooked roux—two tablespoons of flour cooked into two tablespoons of melted butter.