Pot Roast in August

While most of us crave a chilled soup or a light salad in the dead heat of August... my husband wanted pot roast :) To give you some insight into my history with pot roast: My Mom (who is a fabulous cook by the way) used to cook this farely often when we were kids and I HATED to eat it. I have memories of forcing myself to swallow the chunks of meat so I could leave the table because there was something horrible about the texture of chewing this as a child. So clearly the pot roast request broke a few rules in my book, but it actually ended up being a nice (and delicious!) break from the usual summer grill out fare.

So I put together a grocery list and Dustin headed to the store. I'm not gonna lie, I totally planned on doing the pot roast seasoning packet and throwing it all in the crock pot, but since Dustin couldn't find the pot roast seasoning packets and just decided not to get it (love that by the way!), I had to improvise. If you know me, you know I'm not a "recipe follower" anyway. Even when I have the best of intentions and go out and find a great recipe, I almost always stray from the rules and do a bit of my own thing. So, naturally, in this case I resorted to a few staples and everything turned out great.

This was super easy: threw in 3 chopped cloves of garlic, 1/2 sliced yellow onion, about 6 oz tomato sauce and a cup or so of low sodium beef broth in the bottom of the crock pot.

Next, I brought out my handy dandy Calphalon griddle (which I adore by the way) and seasoned the sides of the roast with salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of garlic powder and paprika. I then put a nice sear (just about 2 minutes on each side) on all sides of the roast using the griddle pan. (Because let's be honest, everything tastes better with grill marks on it).
I threw the seared pot roast into the crock pot. I washed and roughly cut up yukon gold potatoes and threw in a small bag of ready-to-go organic baby carrots (I think they taste better) and topped it all of with the other 1/2 of the sliced yellow onion. I also seasoned the potatoes and carrots as I layered them in around the pot roast. I left my little creation on low heat throughout the work day, came home and stirred everything up. Before serving, I removed the pot roast and used a tiny bit of flour to thicken up the remaining sauce into more of a "gravy". Glad I did, because it "stuck" to the carrots and potatoes better this way and still had tons of taste. And, voila! He loved it and, to my surprise, I loved it too!