My dear friend Sunny was a total foodie. We could talk about food for hours and shared many recipes, processes and kitchen hacks. She taught me all about "free scallions" and introduced me to up-to-your-elbows-in-butter Dungeness Crab feasts on newspaper covered tables at crab shacks in Florida. Unfortunately my dear friend is no longer with us, but she did leave me with the recipe for her coveted slow cooker pot roast. Sunny, like me, never shied from sharing as she was one of the most giving people I was ever honored to know. To that end, here is my friend Sunny and her delectable pot roast... pretty much the way she gave it to me. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
- 2-3 pound beef roast, the cheaper the better
- 6 peeled carrots in chunks
- 4 peeled onions, cut up
- 4 unpeeled potatoes, cut bite sized
- 2 ribs of celery sliced bite size
- 1/2 pound of button or baby portobellos, scrubbed and whole
- Fresh garlic
- Roasted garlic
- 1 can of beef broth
- 2 cans of reduced fat condensed cream of mushroom soup
- About 1 cup Marsala wine
- 1-2 cups Cabernet or other red wine
- 1/2 envelope onion soup mix
- Adobo seasoning (regular)
- Olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of butter
Preparation:
We're going to start this around 10:00 AM and you’ll need at
least a 6 quart slow cooker minimum J
Drizzle some olive oil into a hot heavy sauté pan. Place your roast in the oil,
sprinkle it with Adobo and brown the meat on all sides. Once that's done,
remove the roast and place it in a slow cooker that's been coated with cooking
spray.
Add the butter to the pan, then the onions and some roasted
garlic. If you aren't keeping roasted garlic in the house, you're missing out. Sauté
until the onions are just a little tender, and then pour them over the roast in
the slow cooker. Deglaze the pan by pouring Marsala wine into it and scraping
the bits off the bottom. Add this to the slow cooker as well. Add the carrots,
mushrooms, potatoes, the celery and the tablespoon of fresh garlic, the onion
soup mix, the beef broth and Cabernet to taste ...then cover and set on high.
After 6 hrs add the mushroom soup, give the whole mess a
good stir, set to low and go turn on a movie. It needs about two hours more to
blend the flavors. If you don’t have room for the two cans, scoop out some of
the gravy into a saucepan and add a dash of the mushroom soup. You’ll add this
back to your main gravy after the meat is removed from the slow cooker.
Blessed be... and happy cooking!