crockpot chronicles: day 2

we made it halfway through the week! - should be a downhill slide from here til friday, don't y'all think?

we had some delicious italian beef on monday, and today we went for some more beef, but from a different region - slow cooker barbecue beef? yes, please! here we go:

Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Sandwiches – from Southern Living via myrecipes.com

Ingredients

1 (3 1/2-pound) eye-of-round roast, cut in half vertically

2 teaspoons salt, divided

2 garlic cloves, pressed

yes, i buy store brands. no, i'm not store-loyal. :-)

1 (10-ounce) can condensed beef broth 

1 cup ketchup

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice

3 tablespoons steak sauce

1 teaspoon coarse ground pepper

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

12 Kaiser rolls or sandwich buns

Dill pickle slices

Preparation

Sprinkle beef evenly with 1 teaspoon salt.

Stir together remaining 1 teaspoon salt, garlic, and next 7 ingredients. Pour half of mixture into a 5 1/2-quart slow cooker. Place beef in slow cooker, and pour remaining mixture over beef.

Cover and cook on HIGH 7 hours.

Shred beef in slow cooker with two forks. Serve in rolls or buns with dill pickle slices.

the prep (or getting things in the pot) for this one took a little more time than the italian beef, if only for all the measuring. i must say, i am a fan of throw-and-go. (as in...throw it in the crockpot and go away.) i used the same chuck roast as i did yesterday. well, not the same one, but the same as in it was chuck like yesterday's and i bought it at the same time. also, it was only 3 pounds, not 3 1/2, and i did not cut it. i don't think any of this affected (that's affect, with an a) the outcome negatively. yummy in my tummy!

other notes

• i grated the garlic instead of pressing. gosh, i can't wait to get myself a microplane. [random sidenote - got a gift card to crate & barrel for my birthday and i saw one in the catalog so it probably won't be much longer!]
• i used fresh lemons for the juice, one, because i didn't run into any bottled juice in the store and two, i have this handheld juicer i love using. it took 4 small lemons to get the 1/2 cup of juice - watch for seeds!
• the whole "mixture" came out to about 3c for me, so 1 1/2 c in the crockpot before the roast, 1 1/2 c after. it usually helps me to know how much of something i've got coming so i know what size bowl to mix it up in. i know some of y'all know what i'm talking about, when you start getting everything put together then you realize it's not going to fit...
• don't forget, when you're shredding the beef in the crock pot, to pull out any fat - it came off pretty easily for me again today.
• i used those same hawaiian rolls from last night because they're so yummy and just the perfect size.
• i skipped the pickles because pickles are gross. if you don't find them gross, by all means, but i just couldn't do it.
• i didn't have a side, but i would go for some green beans. i have this great green bean and pine nut recipe that uses fresh green beans and, if memory serves, takes under 10 minutes. fantastic!

now to the judges:

• ease of prep - 4
  it did take like 15 minutes. and 15 minutes to put everything in a pot? come on. i can take one point for that.
• multiple parts/same pot - 2
  again, no other parts here. but a green bean side wouldn't have been much trouble at all, so i can leave a couple points here.
• cooks for 6-8 hours - 5
  the recipe says 7, i took it out at 6 1/2 - the roast almost fell apart in the crockpot. perfect!
• crockpot to table ease - 5
  no problem here at all. put some meat on the buns/rolls, spoon a little juice (really not thick enough to call it a sauce) over the top, and since pickles are gross, we're good to go.
• freezer leftovers - 4
  i'm starting to worry that this is a sort of double-taxation category and these recipes are getting penalized twice for not having a side. for this reason, there may be some scoring revision before all is said and done, but for now, i'm going to leave it as-is. (i'm also thinking of adding a yummy-ness category because that seems pretty important!)

final score - 20/25

i'm going to check out for this p.m.; all this yummy food is wearing me out! - i'd love to hear how the italian beef turned out for y'all!