In my recent post on Food, Nourishment, and Nurturing, I argued that home-cooked food consumed at the table is both more nourishing and more nurturing than convenience foods consumed on the go, and I lamented the perceived decline of the family dinner.  A friend who commented on that post said that she and her husband were making an effort to have family dinners at home, but she mentioned how challenging that sometimes could be for a couple with demanding jobs and active teenagers.  

I was thinking about my friend’s comment this weekend as I made a pot roast in the slow cooker.  Slow cookers aren’t great for all cooking tasks, but they are perfect for cuts of meat with lots of marbling and connective tissue, which require “low and slow” cooking.  Slow cookers also aren’t the be-all-end-all for working people, because producing a truly tasty slow cooker meal often involves doing some browning or sautéing on the front end, cooking for a length of time that is inconvenient relative to a standard work day, or both. 

The pot roast recipe provided below, however, is ideal for the working person because the pre-cooker prep time is minimal and the cooking time can range from 8.5 to 10 ten hours to correspond to an average work day.  This recipe essentially is the Classic Pot Roast recipe from Slow Cooker Revolution Volume 2: The Easy Prep Edition by America’s Test Kitchen, with some slight variations.  To accompany your tender and tasty pot roast, you might try Alton Brown’s horseradish cream sauce, which also is extremely easy and is better made a day or two ahead for a more developed horseradish flavor.  I’ve provided my variation on that below as well.

As a final note, in addition to Slow Cooker Revolution Volume 2, which is geared toward making the slow cooker experience as effort-free as possible while still producing tasty results, America’s Test Kitchen offers the original Slow Cooker Revolution, which is a great basic primer on using the slow cooker, and Healthy Slow Cooker Revolution, which as its name suggests emphasizes nutrition in its recipes.  If you are interested in exploring the possibilities of your slow cooker, then these books are worth perusing.

Easiest Pot Roast Ever

Note:  You will need a large oval slow cooker for this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 10.5-ounce can condensed French onion soup (do not dilute with any liquid)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 ounce dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed (or substitute several ounces chopped fresh mushrooms, if you have them handy and have time to wash and chop them)
• 1 3-pound boneless beef chuck-eye roast (for this recipe you will want a long, relatively flat piece of beef, not a piece that has been rolled and tied)
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 pounds small, well-scrubbed turnips, cut into 1- to 2-inch pieces if the whole vegetables are larger than that.  (The original recipe calls for small Yukon gold potatoes, but I prefer turnips because they hold their texture better during long cooking and add more flavor.  You can use either one, or a combination.)
• 1 pound baby carrots

Instructions

• Whisk the soup, tomato paste, and mushrooms together in the slow cooker crock.
• Salt and pepper the roast liberally on both sides, and place it into the soup mixture.
• Place the turnips (and/or potatoes) and carrots on top of the roast.  
• Cover the slow cooker and cook until the beef is tender, 8.5 to 10 hours on low.
• When the roast is tender, transfer it to a carving board, cover it loosely with aluminum foil, and let it rest for 15 minutes.  Transfer vegetables to a large serving dish and cover tightly with foil.  While the roast rests, defat the cooking liquid and salt and pepper it to taste.
• Cut the roast — it should be falling-apart-tender, much like pulled pork — place it on a serving platter, and cover it with some of the cooking liquid.  Serve with the vegetables and remaining liquid.

Horseradish Cream Sauce

Note: Be careful when handling fresh horseradish, because it’s hot (i.e., don’t touch your eyes, and make sure you work in a well-ventilated area).  To prepare the horseradish for this recipe, peel the root with a y-shaped vegetable peeler or sharp paring knife.  Then either grate it with a box grater or microplane, or cut it into small pieces and grind it in a blender or food processor.  If you choose the latter method, do not over-process — the goal is finely ground horseradish, not horseradish paste.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sour cream (use the regular full-fat kind, not a denatured wanna be version)
• 1/4 cup freshly grated horseradish, or more to taste (I probably used closer to 1/2 cup, but I am a horseradish fiend)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon unfiltered apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar (the original recipe calls for the latter, but I used the former and it worked just fine)
• Salt and pepper to taste (the original recipe suggests 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon freshly-grated black pepper, but I used more salt and less pepper than that)

Instructions

• Place all ingredients in an appropriately-sized bowl and whisk until smooth.
• Refrigerate overnight, and whisk or stir again before serving.
• The sauce will keep in the refrigerator for a week or two in a sealed container and gets better (meaning more horseradishy and pungent) as it ages.