Crockpot Roast

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image from www.Target.com

One of the nice things about living close to family is never having to cook fancy Sunday or Holiday meals. I'm all about desserts, but meals, involving meat, not my strong point. So when we moved to Kansas almost three years ago I started making roasts in my crockpot. Which was not how my parents did it, but I didn't have any oven proof pots (which is how they cook their roasts). I now like to think that I've become an expert on roasts. Not really. I have no idea how to pick a good roast, I like it when they turn out stringy and that only happens about 1/3 of the time. But the potatoes turn out great, and that's my favorite part. And I've become rather successful at gravy making, last night's gravy turned out fabulously. I don't really have a roast recipe, but here's the gist of it.

Sunday Pot Roast

Ingredients:
Roast
Carrots
Potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Lipton's Onion Soup mix**
Water
2 TBSP flour
Lawry Seasoning Salt

Directions:
Cut onions into huge chunks (the easier to pick them out for those of us who hate onions), peel a few cloves of garlic, peel potatoes, get a couple handfuls of baby carrots. Throw all of this into the crockpot. Meanwhile, flour your roast and brown it on all sides in a frying pan. Place roast in crockpot. Mix onion soup mix with water (following directions on soup mix), pour over top of everything. Cover and cook 5-6 hours on high, 8-9 hours on low.

For the gravy, remove about 2-3 cups of juice from crockpot to a pot. Whisk two tablespoons of flour with 1/4 cup water* and add to juices. Stir constantly over high heat until thickened. Cool slightly.

Sprinkle Lawry's Seasoning Salt on potatoes and meat. So tastey. That's my brother's addiction, well, my whole family's really. Lawry's Seasoning Salt.

*As for crockpots... mine is way too small. It's the 4-5 quart variety, which seemed huge when registering for it for our wedding when there was just the two of us and I wasn't really sure what to do with a crockpot. Now, when I make a roast the lid hardly fits on because I use so many potatoes to ensure that I get a ton. I need to invest in a much larger crockpot but need the cupboard space first.

**There's a roast recipe on the back of the soup mix, I basically follow that. For the gravy as well.

Creamy Italian Crockpot Chicken

*This isn't the exact recipe, although I thought this was the blog where I got my recipe. Here's how I make it:

Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts**
1 packet Good Seasons Italian dressing mix (an envelope of powder)
8 oz. cream cheese ***
2 cans cream of chicken soup
egg noodles

Directions:
In a crockpot, cook 3 chicken breasts sprinkled with dressing mix for about 3 hours. Shred chicken and return it to the crockpot. Add 8 oz. of cream cheese and two cans of cream of chicken soup***. Cook an additional 2-3 hours. Serve over egg noodles.***

**The original recipe I found called for frozen chicken breasts. The first time I made this recipe I made it this way and it turned out fine, I just used the full time so it was cooking 6-7 hours. But I worry about frozen chicken in a crockpot, so this time the chicken I used wasn't frozen and after the first 3 hours with just Italian dressing seasoning, it seemed a bit dry as I was shredding it... but turned out fine once everything else was added in.

*** Since we're trying to be healthy and all, I used 1/3 fat cream cheese and fat free, low sodium cream of chicken soup and served it on top of whole wheat noodles.