California Roast, Baby Carrots and Creamy Garlic Pasta Shells

I bought a California Roast a couple Saturdays back. It's not a cut that is usually seen around our area. In fact, I have only ever seen it in one store, and that is the little full service grocery that opened in town just over a year ago. They have a fully operational butcher shop in the back and the meat appears to be cut on site. At least, the beef does. Anyway, they have these California Roasts that are supposedly more of a chuck roast, but a different shape. I guess like they have tri-tip roasts out West, but not here in the East. 

I usually buy bottom round roasts, but I haven't found any good prices lately. And, this kind of roast cooks down into a more tender piece of meat than the bottom round does, although the bottom round is prettier to cut. It cuts more neatly and evenly.

Still, I got this really big California Roast with the intention of having it the next week. I'm glad it was still good because it took me five days to get to it! LOL 

I put it in the slow cooker around noon, poured the dry onion soup mix over it and then added a can of beef broth and added some baby carrots. I turned it on high and left it to do it's business. By 4PM, the house was smelling very roasty. I checked it and saw that it was cooking well. I poked the carrots with a fork and was happy that they were mostly cooked through (carrots can be stubborn at times). 

Debra came home and my stomach was growling terribly, so I decided to try to put something with them because I didn't want to bother making mashed potatoes. I found a Knorr side dish pasta that we had bought when we went shopping a month ago and that's what I made. In less than 15 minutes, we had dinner ready to eat. I was surprised that I liked the Creamy Garlic Pasta because I really don't like garlic. But, this wasn't a heavy garlic flavor - it was very mellow and actually quite good.

Last of all, I had two slices of bread with the gravy I made from the roast. Yeah - really. That was something we used to do when I was growing up. Usually, we'd tear up the bread before putting the gravy on, but my plate was empty, so I left them whole and thoroughly enjoyed that little trip into the past. 

So, then I put the roast is back in the slow cooker with the remaining gravy. I let it continue to cook until it fell apart, then I shredded it. I wanted to pick up some Kaiser rolls so we could have hot roast beef sandwiches, but that didn't happen. Instead, I enjoyed some with tortillas.

This was previously posted to Bubblews.com. I've made some grammatical adjustments to account for a later posting date.

Super Easy Crockpot Roast Beef

I live for simple cooking. If the ingredient list requires me to scroll, it’s a good bet I won’t be making that particular thing. That’s just how I am. But, if I can find a way to make something taste like I did a lot of work with little effort, you can bet it’s going to be on my must make list. This is one of those recipes.

Out of habit I buy, when I have the money and it’s on sale, bottom round roasts. That’s what Mom bought and I prefer them to chuck roasts just because I hate dealing with all that fat. The roasts that I buy range anywhere from 2.5 to 3.25 lbs (there’s only two of us), so it fits well in my 3 qt. crockpot.

I then either put a package of onion soup over the meat (without searing it) or put peeled potatoes and carrots in first with the meat on top followed by the onion soup mix. I have also used Campbell’s condensed onion soup (NOT cream of onion) with excellent results. I then add a half to a full cup of water and let it cook on low all day.

The meat comes out, usually, tender, moist and full of flavor. You can strain the onion bits if you want or leave them in the broth for onion gravy. You can also add some more water (I usually end up with 2 cups of gravy) and then use a flour/water slurry to thicken it. If you remove the meat and vegetables right away, the broth will still be hot enough to thicken in the crockpot.

French Onion Pot Roast - similar to mine

I don’t add any other seasonings because of all the seasonings in the soup mix or can of soup, although they’re not as concentrated in the can as they are in the dry mix. You can also buy low sodium onion soup mix if you want to reduce the amount of sodium.

I use bottom round roast, but one time I used a California roast (very much like a chuck roast) and it just fell apart so wonderfully. Perfect for roast beef sandwiches!!

The potatoes and the carrots are tender and flavored from the soup mix and the resulting gravy is flavored by the potatoes and the carrots. You can eat the potatoes with butter like baked potatoes or mash them on your plate to use with the gravy. It’s a win-win, as far as I’m concerned!


The photo is not my roast, but is made the same way I make mine and looks very much like mine. The photo is also a link to the recipe it goes with.

Finally - some new food!

It has been so long and no matter how many times I tell myself (and anyone reading) that I'm going to try harder to keep up, it just doesn't seem to happen. Yet, I don't want to give up. So, here I am again with something to post.

My daughter has been working for a fresh produce distributor out of Holland who also develops vegetable varieties of their own. One of their own creations is Tommies Snack Tomatoes. These are specially developed miniature plum tomatoes that are marketed for kids to snack on. They come in little reusable buckets that hold up to four cups of tomatoes. 

She brought home four of these little buckets this week as well as a large bag of fresh string beans and three packs of orange and yellow peppers. We don't cook every day, so I need to find a way to use these things where we're not losing them. We use a lot of tomatoes, peppers and green beans, so if I can prep them right, we will get use out of them.

Well, I went online looking for recipes that use Tommies as an ingredient. They just weren't out there. But, I saw someone describe the Tommies as "grape tomatoes", so I used that as a search term and that's when I came upon this recipe for Roasted Tomato Pizza Sauce. 

Roasted Tomato Pizza Sauce

 I didn't blend this for sauce after I roasted them, but boy did they smell good and look wonderful!! I ended up adding some ready-made pasta sauce to the roasted tomatoes and then cooked some elbow macaronis to put them all together. I do think I should have added a little sugar to them because they were very acidic, but all in all, it turned out well. I used a potato masher to mash the roasted tomatoes after I added the other pasta sauce. Seriously, it wasn't at all bad - just tangy. I might add a bit of sugar to it before I reheat it tomorrow to cut the acidity.

So, tomorrow I need to cut and blanch the string beans and cut and freeze the peppers. They'll all get used, I can guarantee it. We eat a lot of all of these things.

R is for Roast Beef

I wish I could say I'm having this very thing tonight, but I'm not. We do love our roast beef. The last one we had was a few weeks ago and was the first time I'd ever cooked a chuck roast. I've always cooked bottom round roasts like my  mother used to do. They don't fall apart as readily as the chuck roast does, but can be cooked until they do if you like them that way. 

Roast Beef with parsnips, carrots, onions & rutabega

Mom used to cook them on top of the stove (I don't remember any roast ever going in the oven) and they were so flavorful and tender. On occasion, she'd cook them until they fell apart and then add barbecue sauce to them for BBQ beef sandwiches. I've cooked them until they fell apart and had hot roast beef sandwiches with the shredded meat. This last time, though, we ate the beef and broth over mashed potatoes and it was wonderful!


Although I don't have any roast in the freezer (except for a small portion of that chuck), I was thinking of putting several steaks in the crockpot and cooking them like I would a roast until they are fork tender. Since we like it shredded anyway, the end result should be the same, don't you think?


I usually add onion soup mix and a bit of water to the pot for flavor and moisture. The last roast I made I used beef broth instead of water. I don't always have any on hand. If I use a full-sized crock, I'll also add carrots and potatoes. I love how the flavors blend in the broth for the gravy.


I've even made German Beef Rouladen which is not unlike bracciole in appearance, but the flavor is tart because of the beef rolls being stuffed with pickles. The gravy you get on this dish is wonderful!


What seasoning do you like to use for your roasts? Do you brown them first? Do you cook them in a crock, on the stove or in the oven? Do you do anything unique to yours that's worth sharing?

Recipes and Rain (and a bit of a Rant)

It is Wednesday and has been raining since before sunup (can't see the sun, but I know it's there somewhere). I thought today might be a good day to share some recipes I've tried and enjoyed. Of course, I can't do that until I've chatted a bit, so I hope you don't mind.


Yesterday, I spent all day (literally) helping Tom get his homework together and, supposedly, study for his exam at school. Getting him to do his homework was pretty much like trying to put a collar on a jelly fish. Now, you need to understand - this is NOT a child I'm talking about. This is a 36-yr old man who already has a Master's Degree from Villanova...someone who can rattle off political facts and analyses like an encyclopedia....a man who is one of the least stupid people I know. But, this is also a very spoiled man who has always managed to find someone else to do whatever it is he doesn't want to do. That's where I come in.


Honestly, I don't mind doing some of the work. I enjoy working on the computer and I enjoy learning the software he's studying (Microsoft Office and WordPerfect). (Quite frankly, tuition-free learning is the way to go.) In the long run, it helps me as well as him. My problem is (hopefully was) that he thought he could just look at the chapter a few times before class and know how to do the work. He thought that as long as he turned in homework and showed up, he'd pass. He didn't think he needed to actually apply what he was supposedly learning by practicing. That's where we parted ways yesterday.


He learned that he was failing the course. He planned to appeal that, which is fine if everyone in the class is failing. It shows a distinct lacking on the part of the instructor. But, even though this instructor has nothing but negative reviews from her students, I also felt that HE was mostly responsible for his lack of learning. The man refuses to take notes. He loves playing dumb in class and having all the girls help him. He thought the game would work with his teacher as well as his tutor. He was wrong.


He's attending school under the Trade Act for job losses due to jobs being sent overseas. The company for whom he'd worked 12.5 years let almost everyone go after sending all of their accounting, publisher contact and most of the customer service jobs to Singapore and Sri Lanka. He spent most of his last year with them in Singapore training their replacements. Now he's being retrained for future employment (he had no computer skills at all and wasn't particularly marketable with a Political Science degree). He's in the Paralegal program which I think is a good fit for him considering his ability to understand the abstract. But, he MUST learn the software. I don't care HOW much he hates computers (I feel the same way about typewriters, which is why I avoided secretarial courses passionately in high school), they are what is being used and they are what is being used EXTENSIVELY in law offices. He can learn everything he wants about law and legal writing, but he'd damned well better know how to put it into a computer since that's what a Paralegal will be doing!!


At any rate, I set out an assignment for him to do. A short one. An easy one. All he had to do was manipulate WordPerfect to change whatever it asked to change. It was pre-written!! It took him almost two hours to finish what should have taken 20 minutes at most. He got up and down, went outside to smoke, decided he needed to shave because his face itched, complained about computers, turned on the news, went to various websites that weren't work related (some of them political, but others were less than savory), complained that he was hungry, and so on. He just wouldn't get started. When he finally realized I wasn't going to step up and rescue him, he sat down and got it done. AAGGHHH!!!


So, now he's changed his two computer classes to "audit", plans to take one this summer and has gotten his counselor's approval to not take the other one (Word Perfect) if he takes and passes MS Word. I guess I can now relax as well, but someone who hates computers should have NEVER taken TWO computer courses during the same semester. Period!!


OK, so that's out of my system. Let's move on to rain. The forecast I received by email says we can expect snow today and tomorrow following the rain earlier in the day. SNOW!! On March 23!! I knew they were having snow farther north, but didn't think it would drop down to visit us here. And, it might not since it's mid-afternoon and still no sign of the white stuff. I love rain and I like snow, but I don't like that slushy stuff that's best had in glasses with a variety of flavored syrups and a straw. It's messy, it gets dirty, there's nothing at all soothing about it. Rain puts me to sleep and snow quiets the noisy world around us. Slush is mush - there is nothing at all poetic about it. So, if it's gonna snow, LET IT SNOW!! Or stay gone!!


Ready for those recipes I promised? Assuming you haven't simply scrolled down to find them? LOL


I made this one when I found an opened can of beer in the fridge (I don't drink beer, but my kids do). I found a recipe that sounded just right and this was the result. This and other recipes are posted on my GroupRecipes page under the name chatombreux.

German Beer Braised Pot Roast

• Ingredients
  
  
  ·         1 1/2 -2 lb. beef rump roast (I used a bottom round about the same size)
  ·         1 T. oil
  ·         2 pieces of bacon
  ·         1/4 tsp. salt
  ·         1 medium onion, chopped
  ·         2 carrots, cubed
  ·         1 bay leaf
  ·         3 whole cloves
  ·         1 tsp. black peppercorns, crushed
  ·         12 oz. beer or brown ale
  ·         1 c. beef broth or bouillon to make 1 cup
  ·         2 tsp. molasses or dark beet syrup (Ruebensirup in Germany)
  ·         1 T. vinegar
  ·         1 T. flour
  ·         1 T. butter (I left this out - enough fat in the liquid from the meat & bacon)
  
  
  How to make it
  ·         Heat oil in Dutch oven. Brown roast sharply on all sides and remove. Lay the bacon on the bottom of the Dutch oven, place the browned roast on it and sprinkle with salt.
  ·         Place onions, carrots and spices around the sides of the roast. Pour the beer and the broth over the roast, then mix the vinegar with the molasses and add to the liquids. Liquids should be 1 to 2 inches deep. Place lid on pan and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until meat is tender.
  ·         Remove roast and cover with foil to keep warm. Strain and reserve the broth. Melt the butter in the pan, add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add 2 cups of reserved broth, a little at a time and stirring the sauce smooth after each addition. Add pepper, salt, vinegar or sugar to taste.
  ·         Serve sauce (gravy) over roast. This roast is good with braised cabbage or mixed vegetables and potatoes to soak up the gravy.
  
  

It was sweeter than I'd expected, but still quite good. I plan to leave out the molasses next time.

One Pot Kielbasa And Cabbage Meal

• Time 210 minutes
  Serves 8
  
  
  Ingredients
  ·         1 lb kielbasa, cut into coins
  ·         4 med. potatoes, peeled and cut up into chunks
  ·         1 small cabbage, rough cut into large chunks
  ·         2 or more carrots, peeled and cut up
  ·         1/2 large onion, large diced
  ·         1 cup of frozen kernel corn
  ·         1 1/2 cups frozen string beans
  ·         1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes (I used Italian seasoned)
  ·         2 cups beef broth
  ·         2 cups chicken broth
  ·         Salt and pepper to taste
  
  
  How to make it
  ·         Core and peel off the unusable leaves from the cabbage and cut up into large chunks. Do the same to the onion (it was about 3" in diameter). Put both in the pot. Peel and chunk the carrot, too. Add that to the pot with the two cups of beef broth.
  ·         Let this cook until the cabbage is reduced and the broth is as well. Then add the cut up kielbasa, string beans, corn kernels, the tomatoes and the 2 cups of chicken broth. Add pepper (I used fresh ground). I didn't measure it, but figure I added about 1/2 tsp or so. I didn't add salt because there would be salt in the broths as well as the can of tomatoes.
  ·         I lowered the burner flame as low as I could and let the pot just simmer after stirring to mix thoroughly. Periodically, I went back and stirred again to make sure everything in the pot got hot throughout and the flavors melded.
  ·         After just over 3 hours, I checked the carrots and the cabbage (two things I find that take longer to cook through than other things) and found them to be tender.

This was so much better than I expected it to be considering I'm a fan of neither kielbasa nor cabbage. Next time, though, I'll use ham.

photo by Tamorlan

German Beef Rouladen

Time 65 minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds flank steak (or flattened cube steaks)
• German stone ground mustard, to taste (I used Guldens Brown)
• 1/2 pound thick sliced bacon
• 2 large onions, sliced
• 1 (16 ounce) jar dill pickle slices
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 cube beef bouillon

 How to make it

• Cut the flank steak into thin filets; about 1/4 inch thick and 3 inches wide.
• Generously spread one side of each filet with mustard to taste. Place bacon, onions and pickle slices on each filet and form into a roll. Use string or toothpicks to hold the roll together.
• Heat a skillet over medium heat and melt butter. Place the rolls in the butter and sauté until browned.
• Pour in 2 1/2 cups of water and add the bouillon cube; stirring to dissolve the bouillon cube. Simmer the rolls for about an hour. Thicken the gravy as you desire.

This was DELICIOUS!! I made this while I was living with my mother as her caretaker. I don't like pickles, but I love what they did to the meat! The gravy was rich and flavorful.

image from WisconsinMade.com

Chicken And Stuffing For Two

·         Time 50 minutes

    Serves 2

Ingredients

•         2 chicken breasts (bone-in or out, with skin or without)
•          1 regular sized box of stovetop-style chicken stuffing (or cornbread stuffing)
•          1/2 can cranberry sauce (jellied or whole)
•          1/4 cup orange juice
•          1 pkg onion soup mix
•          1 pkg chicken gravy (or a jar of chicken gravy)

How to make it

• Prepare the stuffing mix to have ready.
• Prepare the breasts (rinsing, skinning them if you want, de-boning them if not already de-boned) and season them with salt and pepper. If they are large breasts, cut a pocket into the large side and stuff some dressing in them, placing them in a casserole dish (square or oblong).
• Place the rest of the stuffing around the breasts in the casserole/baking dish.
• Take 1/2 can of cranberry sauce and mix well with the orange juice and the onion soup mix.
• Pour this gently over the breasts. Don't worry about run-off - it will help flavor the stuffing.
• Mix the gravy mix with cold water and pour it over the stuffing evenly (likewise with the jarred gravy if you use that).
• You might want to put some aluminum foil over the stuffing at each end to prevent too much overbaking against the sides of the pan.
• Place casserole/baking dish in a 350 oven (400 if you want to cook a few minutes faster - but watch that it doesn't overcook) for 40-50 minutes.

I hope you enjoy these recipes. Please post a comment if you try them and what tweaks you'd made to suit your tastes. I hope to post more soon.