Pot Roast or Beef Stew in a Crockpot

Directions

Buy a rump roast or whatever quantity of beef stew meat you desire. Put flour in a large plastic bag; add salt, pepper, garlic powder to flour. Put in rump roast or beef cubes and thoroughly coat with flour. Heat oil in a large pan until quite hot but not smoking. Put in rump roast or cubes, but if you have a lot of beef cubes, don’t overcrowd the pan. Brown on all sides. When brown, remove from the pan to a plate with paper towels. (This helps remove a little of the excess oil.) Add to pan sliced or chopped onions (I use 2…because we really like onions.) Sauté until they are limp and starting to brown. While this is happening, scrape bottom of pan, loosening the fried “flavor.”
While onions are cooking, prepare your crockpot by spraying all sides and bottom with PAM. (Makes it easier to clean.) When onions are ready and you’ve scraped the bottom of the pan, put onions and scraped bits into the bottom of the crockpot. Put meat on top of onions. In a bowl, mix together 3 cans of Campbell’s Golden Mushroom Soup, 1 package of the dried onion soup mix, 1 can of Campbell’s beef broth (this gives the gravy richness) and either ½ to 1 can of red wine (red zinfandel, merlot, or cabernet). Mix all these ingredients together and pour over the meat and onions. Clean small red and white potatoes (you don’t need to peel them!) Add cleaned whole mushrooms, if you like. I also add peeled rutabagas or parsnips, but only because my family likes them as much as potatoes. Nestle the potatoes and veggies around the meat.

Refrigerate in the crockpot over night. In the a. m., take out, plug in and set on low. (It will need to cook 12 hours on low.)

When you get home from work (about 15 minutes before you want to serve dinner), turn oven on low (175 degrees or so), remove meat, veggies and onions from the crockpot and put in the serving dish. Cover with foil and put in the oven while you finish the dish.

Scrape sides of crockpot and pour all the gravy (which may still contain some onion, too) into a largish pan. Put the crockpot into the sink and fill with hot soapy water. (Will make it easy to clean.) Bring the gravy to boil, add peeled carrots. Simmer on medium high until carrots are cooked….just fork tender. Remove carrots to serving dish. Continue “boiling/simmering” the gravy until reduced and slightly thickened. Stir occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn. Add Wondra Flour if need to thicken more.

Pour gravy into a gravy boat. Bring meat and veggies to the table. If you have a rump roast, cut across (not with) the grain. Put gravy over the meat…and potatoes, if you like.