Hunk of Meat Monday: Balsamic Beef Roast

When I wasn't huddled around the heater trying to stay warm out here on the arctic plains this past weekend, I was catching up on my Pinterest recipe collection and cooking. I stumbled across what may be my FAVORITE beef roast recipe. Bonus: it called for ingredients I already had on hand and was super easy.

Buzzard's Crockpot Balsamic Beef Roast

Ingredients:
2 cups beef broth
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
~ 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
~ 2 tbsp soy sauce
~ 2 tbsp honey
~ 1 tsp red pepper flakes
~ 4 cloves garlic, chopped

Assemble all of your ingredients, including a beef roast. The amount of marinade will work for a roast up to 3-4 pounds.

Gather your ingredients

Mix together all of your ingredients. Place beef roast in your Crockpot and pour mixture over the beef. Our roast was about 1.25-1.5 pounds and it was the perfect medium-rare doneness after about 2 hours on high. If you have a larger roast (3-4) pounds, you could do 4 hours on high or probably 6 hours on low.

Pour the ingredient mixture onto your roast. Look at all that garlic, yum!

When done, place beef roast in a serving dish and spoon gravy and beef bits over the meat to moisten and infuse with deliciousness.


Robust flavor and so very delicious!

Please, for the sake of all things holy, don't cook your beef to well-done! You only need to cook the roast to 145F!

If you try this one out, let me know how you liked it. We LOVED it - the flavor was robust and the roast stayed very moist. This will definitely be a repeat in our house.

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

A Party in Your Mouth - Deck of Cards Beans and Rice in the Crockpot

As you can probably, tell I love my crockpot. From November-March, it's my favorite kitchen appliance - it even beats out the frying pan and microwave! Last week, I showed you my delicious Dr. Pepper beef roast, so this week we're doing Deck of Cards Beans and Rice! I got my inspiration from Janice Person's recipe, but added a few more things.

Again, this is a really simple recipe, I don't measure things often and it's delicious.

Deck of Cards Beans and Rice

• 2 cans black beans
• 2 cans red beans (not kidney beans)
• Worcestershire sauce
• A1 steak sauce
• Heinz 57 steak sauce
• 1-2 lbs of smoked sausage
• Lawry's seasoned salt (or similar, I used Red Robin french fry seasoning)
• Rice - cooked separately

The tools for your dinner masterpiece

Put the three sauces in the bottom of crockpot first - Janice's recipe called for about 1 tbsp of each but I probably doubled that - I like it saucyyyy.

 

Sauce it up!

 Drain one can each of black and red beans (get it? black and red, deck of cards??) and put in crockpot.

Black and red - lots of yummy carbs!

 Slice up sausage into pieces (maybe 1/2" thick?) and layer on beans. At this point I put some more sauces on it and sprinkled the Red Robin seasoning over it - then repeat with beans and sausage layering. 

Look at all that delicious sausage - the more the better!

Cook on low for 2-3 hours or if you're in a big hurry, stick it on high until thoroughly cooked. Prepare rice as directed and serve up on the side.


The finished product - very delicious and very filling!

Warning - this recipe makes enough for probably 5-6 people. The Ninja and I each had a hefty portion for dinner and there was plenty for lunch and dinner the next day. If you're cooking for just two, cut it down to one can of each kind of beans (but don't cut back sausage - don't cut back on the meat!).

If you like salt more than sweet - use more Worcestershire sauce than the other two sauces.

Hope you all enjoy my recipes - I'd love to hear your feedback!

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Awesome Freakin' Beef Roast Recipe

No fancy schmancy title needed for this - just the truth.

It's cold. I hate doing dishes. These two factors equate to a lot of crockpot dinners. In the past I've made chicken n' noodles, beef roasts, teriyaki chicken, pork loin with apples (thanks for the recipe, Melissa!) and a variety of dips. I decided to put a twist on my roast prep and try a new flavor. I had heard of beef roasts cooked in Coke but I'm a Dr. Pepper fiend so I did some tweaking and came up with the following:

Buzzard's Delish Dr. Pepper Beef Roast (again, no fancy titles here)

• 3 lb beef roast (top round, top sirloin, rump etc)
• 1 can Dr. Pepper
• ~10 oz water (I just filled up the soda can with water and called it good)
• Salt and pepper*
• 3 cloves garlic
• Worcestershire sauce*
• Secret ingredient

Combine all ingredients and cook in crockpot on low for 5-7 hours or until 145 degrees [it didn't take 7 hours for mine to cook. More like 5.5]
*I learned how to cook from my mom and grandmas - they didn't measure things out often so I don't either.

Ingredients - very simple!

I didn't have any actual garlic so I used a combo of garlic salt and minced garlic from our fridge (again with the approximate amounts and substitutions). Probably 1 1/2 tsp of minced garlic. The salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce are to taste - the Ninja really likes a lot of flavor so I poured in a whole heap (maybe 7-8 squirts/dribbles/shakes).

The masterpiece cooking - I won't reveal my secret ingredient or how much of it I used but it's in your spice cabinet. Probably.

I used a top round roast but you could use any beef roast for this. We buy a lot of meat on sale so we're not too picky about what we get. Sometimes we buy beef roasts and cut them into steaks!

Excuse my horrible iPhone photo - I've mentioned before that I'm a horrible food photographer. But look how it's still pink and not overdone!

You guys, this was so delicious but please don't overcook it! Roasts are done at 145 degrees F and it will be so delicious and you'll love it and be sad you didn't make a bigger roast so you had more for leftovers!

What's been cooking in your kitchen?

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~