Crock Pot Roast Beef and Homemade Bread

Ah Sunday, what a fantastic day to spend in the kitchen. Probably one of my most favorite things to do is hop into the kitchen, crank up the Patriot's game, throw-on my Pancake! apron and cook up a storm! This past Sunday was even better though... we are a two football team household, Matt is a die-hard Brown's fan and I, as previously mentioned love the Patriots. The Brown's weren't playing Sunday which free's Matt up! Yay! Which also means he decided to take on the crock pot. Oh and I'm so glad he did! The man know's how to cook-up a mean piece of beef.  It's a very easy recipe that you could do with any piece of beef. We happened to snag a nice looking piece about 2-3lbs at the food store that morning. Fantastic. Unfortunately, we where too hungry before I snagged a photo of the final meat but I'm sure you can imagine how tasty it looked.

Easy Crock Pot Roast Beef
2-3lbs would feed about 4 ppl, it does shrink a bit while it cooks

Ingredients
Big hunk of meat - we used a 2lb piece of roast beef
1 cup (or at least 1/2 inch covering the bottom of pot) of soy sauce. (I have a large crock pot so we added a bit more sauce to ensure the bottom was covered.)
1 tsp salt and pepper covering both sides of meat
1 tsp of garlic salt
1 tsp of grilling spices
1 tablespoon flour (For gravy)

Steps

1. Turn your crock pot on high
2. Salt and pepper each side of the meat
3. Plop the meat into the crock pot
4. Add in the soy sauce - ensure that it covers the bottom of the pot, and about 1/2 inch up the side of the meat
5. Sprinkle in the garlic salt and grilling spices on top of the meat
6. Cover and DON'T TOUCH IT for at least 4 hours
7. Feel free to open and check starting at around 4.5 hours and cook until done. It should turn gray. 
8. After it's done, pull the meat out and set it aside to rest. If you cut into it right away, you'll let all the juices out. Letting it rest lets the juices soak into the meat.
9. Add the flour to the juices left in the crock pot. Mix to make a nice rich gravy. Add more or less flour depending on how thick you want your gravy.

While he tackled the beef, I decided that it was finally time to take on some homemade bread. I haven't perfected my recipe yet - but I'll share a few photos with you of my first pass. If you have an easy to make bread recipe, I'd love to check it out!

Mexican Crock Pot Chicken

I'm a novice crock-potter. I've had more failures than successes with this sucker but I'm determined to figure out how to make it work for me. I am a expert at making chicken soup so I thought, how different can that be from using a crock pot. GENIUS MOMENT! We've come to find in our house that we both really love pulled chicken... pulled chicken, crock pot, soup BINGO. This recipe is inspired by recipe I found in my new favorite cookbook, The Southern Living Cook Book. No, I'm not making any money off of promoting this sucker, I just have found it to be a great resource for inspirations for new recipes and easy recipes. Check it out and I'd love to know what you think.

Also, I'll make one last request of you fine reader - with my novice status of crock potting, I'd love to see your recipes and test them out! Please comment on this post and share a recipe or link to your blog with a recipe. Thank you!

ANYWAYS... on to the recipe for my Mexican Crock Pot Chicken

Mexican Crock Pot Chicken
(this is about 4 servings worth, add more chicken and the servings increased, there is certianly room for it in the broth.)

Ingredients
(This recipe is for 4 servings approx, adjust meat and liquid for more servings)

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 can petite cut tomatoes - drain the juice
• 1-2 tsp of sea salt (to taste)
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 can pinto beans - with juice
• 20 oz of chicken stock (if you add more chicken breast, add more stock - just make sure the chicken is covered)
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 4 chicken sausage - spicey
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 cup frozen peppers

Steps

1. Plug in your crock pot and turn it on to High. I have a 6 quart cooker as an FYI for the amount of liquid. The amounts listed above are suggestive - just make sure you have enough liquid to cover the chicken breasts and the sausage. 
2. Add your beans to the bottom of the pot and then add the garlic. 
3. Plop the chicken on top and mix in the remaining ingredients, except for the peppers and corn. 
4. Cover the pot and let it cook for 4 hours. 
5. Add the veggies and cook for an hour.
6. Pull out the chicken and pull it apart with a fork so it's shredded. I added it back into the pot and turned it down to warm.
7. You're ready to eat! Serve on top of some rice and maybe top with a little cheese.