Pot Roast

Today I had the afternoon off from work to go to the dentist (what fun). I got home and started putting a pot roast in the crock pot. This is my first ever crock pot meal, but it looks great so far. The recipe follows, but before that I want to clarify some things in the HFCS 30-day challenge. Birthday cake is certainly exempt as is food you get at a restaurant or party. Basically anything you buy or have stored in your pantry that has a label you can read is what we are focusing on here. Luckily I have a head start on the pot roast. No way we can eat 3 pounds of meat in a week, so I plan on freezing half of this bad boy for the first week in November. And now back to the recipe :-)



Crock Pot Roast
(in progress photo)

3 lbs of beef round
0.5 lbs of oxtail
4 turnips
2 parsnips
1 white onion
1 shallot
3 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 potatoes
a few cups of vegetable stock

spices: flour, bay leaves, sage, coriander, salt, pepper, olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic.

Take the 3 lbs of round and coat with a light layer of flour, a bit of salt and pepper. Heat about a tablespoon of oil in an iron skillet over medium heat. Mince one garlic clove and the shallot and put in hot oil. Sear the meat on all sides so that it is a bit brown, but not cooked. Put the meat on a plate to rest and throw out the now very brown garlic and shallot bits. Chop and peel the rest of the veggies. we want big chunks here and ballpark to have stuff roughly the same size (impossible with the carrots and celery, just break these into thirds). Add a few more drizzles of olive oil to the pan and saute the veggies and oxtails just till they are a bit caramelized. Again, don't cook, we just want color.

Add meat to the crock pot fat side up (this will help the fat melt downwards and yield juicier meat). Add the veggies and oxtails, 2 bay leaves, 2 dashes each of coriander and sage. Add the remaining garlic clove whole. Fill the crock pot about an inch or so deep with the vegetable stock. Set on high for about 5 hours.