Recipe: Pot Roast *now with picture!*
As a list making type of gal, I like to categorize all things about life into lists. Just as I firmly believe there is a list of basic wardrobe items every girl (and guy) should have, I believe there is a list of basic food items every girl (and guy) should be able to make. It doesn’t matter if you’re the cooking type or not, you should have a few items in your recipe arsenal that are always easy to make, always turn out right, and are fairly impressive taste-wise, you know, in case you should have to cook a decent dinner for someone.
That said, I like to think of pot roast as the “little black dress” of main dish food items. It’s never too fancy. Never too casual. Lots of room for creativity. Sure, everyone’s had pot roast before, but pot roast done right can be really impressive.
Interestingly, pot roast is one of the few dishes my mother and I both make where I’ve deviated from her recipe (I know, I know, mom’s food is supposed to be the best…) She prefers to make it in the oven; I prefer to make it in the crockpot. While a roast can turn out quite nicely in the oven, I prefer the crockpot (on LOW! for EIGHT! HOURS!), because it’s never too well done for anyone, never too rare for anyone, and it always, always gets to that delicious fall-aparty stage.
For about a year, I’d been using a recipe that involved a roast, a packet of onion soup mix, a can of beef broth, and a can of cream of mushroom soup, which worked out fine and all that. But I wanted something…a little more.