Ingredients
Roast: three pound chuck roast with plenty of visible fat (seriously, the fat is an ingredient and pot roasts exist to turn it into food) (the perfect roast will be 1.5 to 2 inches thick, but thicker will also work fined)
Mushrooms: eight ounces cut to around one-inch square pieces
Yellow onion: medium, cut into thin half moons
Carrots: about two-thirds of a pound, peeled and sliced 3/4 inch thick (for skinny carrots, cut longer slices to get something in the neighborhood of similar proportions.)
Garlic: eight cloves minced
Olive oil
Half a tablespoon of dried thyme
Half a tablespoon of dried rosemary
Half a tablespoon of salt
Fresh ground pepper
Broth: a quart of chicken broth with a plan not to to use it all (Good beef broth is hard to make right, so the standard grocery issue isn't made right, but store-bought chicken broth is quite good)(Having four one-cup boxes of broth on hand will let you open only the ones you need, but I am rarely able to plan that way and usually just throw away what's left in the quart box)
Process
Prepare the vegetables as listed above
Heat a wide skillet over medium heat, film with olive oil when warm, and then warm the oil.
Brown the roast on all wide sides (this is where a two-inch wide and mostly flat roast saves time: one that's close to bread-loaf shape has more sides worth browning.)
Put the roast in the crock pot.
Add a little more oil to the skillet and swirl.
Add the mushrooms, give them a minute on the heat, and then turn them once a minute until you like how brown they are.
Put the mushrooms in the crockpot.
Lower the heat on the skillet and add a little more oil, giving it half a minute to warm.
Put the carrots and onion in the skillet and cook for around three minutes, stirring often. (This lower-heat step can be called "sweating" the vegetables, because the aim is to soften them and strengthen their flavors, without browning them.)
After three minutes, add the garlic and stir steadily for two more minutes.
Dump the entire skillet into the crockpot.
Sprinkle the thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper over the surface. (For pepper, I aim for it looking like around the same amount as the salt.)
Move the vegetables down around the sides of the roast.
Add enough broth to just barely cover almost everything. (See why the amount of broth is unsettled above?)
Cover the crockpot and cook either:
- for seven hours on low (best)
- or two hours on high and three on low (quite good and helpful if you get a slow start)
