Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Presto! Change-O! Leftover Magic

Yesterday's dinner was a pot roast that I cooked up in the crock pot.  It was flavorful, tender and delicious.

Honestly, I could not survive without our crock pot.  As busy as some days are here, having something I can throw ingredients into in the morning that cooks all day for me and then produces tender, flavorful yummy-ness at the end of the day?

Priceless.

Tonight, though, I'm going to work a little leftover magic, mostly because Mr. ReddHedd had a larger than usual helping of the roast beef yesterday and I don't have three full servings to split out among the three of us now.

So...voila!

I'm making open-faced roast beef sandwiches with gravy and a side of heated up leftover potatoes, onions and carrots, also likely with a smattering of gravy on top.  We like love gravy.

I saved some of the juice from the roast yesterday evening, and I'll skim off the excess fat and then make gravy tonight.

This is one of our favorite leftover conversion tricks.

I also perform this with turkey and roast pork to stretch things out a bit if we don't have a full amount of servings after eating.  It is such satisfying comfort food that no one really notices they have gotten  less meat the second day.  (Shhhhhhhh...)


Some other tricks?  I like to saute onions until they caramelize as a topping sometimes, which also makes it look like more food when its really just some extra onions that add a lot of flavor for not a lot of pennies.

Or you can take the roast beef and gravy and make a po'boy out of it.  Folks from New Orleans know what I'm talking about -- crusty roll, shredded roast beef soaked with gravy, a little tomato, lettuce and mayo or creole mustard or both and you are in heaven on a bun.

Or you can shred the beef, mix it into gravy and heat the whole thing up to serve over rice.  Or noodles.  Or mix in with the noodles and some shredded veggies and bake it as a casserole.

Or make soup.  Or stew.  Or...well, you see my point.  Leftover magic is an endless series of magic tricks at our house.

Do you do the same at yours?  Please do tell.  I'm always looking for some more magic to pull out of my hat.

My crockpot pot roast recipe?  Here it is:

Large eye of round roast, trimmed of most visible fat
2 onions, diced
4 potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 c. baby carrots
1 c. diced celery (We dice this very, very small at our house, so it sort of melts into the juices as it cooks, otherwise small people complain about it being there.)
1 c. water
1 to 2 Tbsp. Penzey's beef roast seasoning
2 bay leaves
2 beef boullion cubes
1 envelope beefy onion soup mix
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Dice the onions first thing, and put 2/3 of them in the bottom of the crock pot.  Place the meat on top, then pour water over.  Sprinkle on the beef roast seasoning, pepper and soup mix.  Add bay leaves to water surrounding the roast along with the boullion cubes and celery.  Then top roast with remaining onions, potatoes and carrots.  Put on the lid and cook on LOW for at least 8 hours.  Your house will smell like heaven and people will drool when they enter it.

I use eye of round because it is lower in fat once you trim off that layer on the outside of it before you put it in the crock pot.  Just trimming that layer makes a huge difference in fat content without making much difference at all in terms of flavor.  I don't add much salt to this because there is a lot of salt in the seasonings that I use -- you can certainly adjust to your tastebuds here.  If you have homemade beef stock to use, it is divine.

(Photo of "beast and roots" via bunchofpants.)

2 comments:

Suzanne said...

i use my crock pot to make carmelized onions.... take two or three large onions and chop up. toss into crock pot. add in one stick of butter, cover, and turn on low setting overnight.

the next morning, the onions are all set for whatever i wanna use them for.

Christy Hardin Smith said...

Suzanne, that's a great idea for something that I would normally have to watch like a hawk. It's just like what I do when I make French onion soup, except you've stopped before adding the broth and everything else. That's really genius. Thanks for the tip!