Adventures in Slow Cooking Part IV: Pot Roast

I feel like pot roast is the ultimate slow-cooker meal, even though the method of cooking means it is technically not a roast, and arguably not in a pot. On Wednesday, I decided to go super-old-school and combine in my slow cooker (as seen above) ...

• A 3.77-lb. “beef round bottom round rib roast,” as labeled by my local Key Foods
• 8 oz.’ worth of mushrooms, halved
• 2 leeks, white parts only, sliced into rings (I saved the green parts, and the mushroom stems, to make chicken stock at some point later)
• One packet of Key Foods onion soup mix, rubbed on the roast
• One can’s worth of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
• Half a soup can’s worth of red wine
• Half a soup can’s worth of chicken stock

I let the beef sit for like 30 minutes at room temp while I prepared and threw everything else into the cooker. Then I turned it on low and made myself breakfast, while ugly-crying about the untimely demise of Princess Leia.

Well, gentle reader, we ended up staying out later than expected, because YOLO, and I cooked the heck out of that pot roast. It shredded as soon as you stuck a fork in it. But it was still pretty darn moist—in fact, there was a ton of liquid that I wished would’ve cooked down and thickened a bit more. I am growing to learn that liquids in the slow cooker tend to actually thin out rather than evaporating, I guess because the vegetables release additional moisture. Still and all, the meat was delicious and the leftovers would make excellent tacos.