Winter Comfort Food - Pot Roast

When the weather gets as cold as it has been I long to cook me some old fashioned comfort foods.  This week it was Pot Roast.  The chuck steaks went on sale (when did the price of chuck meat get so high?!!) so that was all the encouragement I needed.

I grabbed the staple ingredients that I had on hand (tomato sauce, ketchup, broth, flour, some herbs (cumin, thyme, bay leaf, Worcestershire Sauce) and veggies like carrots, onion, celery, garlic and red potatoes and got to work.  I decided to use my crock pot instead of cooking it on the stove which takes up room if I want to cook other stuff, and didn't want to put it in the oven to save energy (although heating up the house sounded good I didn't want the electric bill to rise). 

Since there are only two of us here I bought a fairly small piece of meat, about 2 or 2 1/2 pounds (no bone).  I put about a 1/3 cup flour in a zip lock baggie, added some kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and then added the meat and shook it up to coat the meat.  I heated up a cast iron skillet, added some canola oil (about 3-4 tbsp) and browned the meat on both sides and edges.  I made a little mix of cumin and thyme, about 1/2 tsp each and sprinkled that over the meat then put it in the crock pot after I coated the pot with Pam non-stick spray.  That makes the clean up easier by far.

I coarsely chopped the veggies and tossed those in then mixed up about 1/4 cup ketchup with some chicken stock (didn't have beef stock) and poured that over the meat, added the can of tomato sauce pictured above, about 1-2 tbsp of Worcestershire Sauce a bit more salt and pepper, the bay leaf and about 4-5 cloves of minced garlic (I love garlic).  Over all, I added about 2 cups of chicken stock to almost cover the meat.  I then plugged in my crock pot, set the timer on High for 5 hours and relaxed!

That's my way of cooking sometimes.  I love it when the cooking is done by "leave alone".  It gives me time to do a crossword, a puzzle, read, give myself a bubble bath.... you get the picture.  Comfort foods mean Comfort All Around!

We each had dinner of it one night then I had the remainder for lunch today.  Not a bad cost cutter either!

Yum!