Five-Ingredient Beef Roast

A few months ago I was given this recipe to try in the Crock-Pot but as I have said before, I didn't have one until last week. I vowed to try it as soon as I didn't have to spend twenty bucks on a beef roast. I think the price of meat is getting a tad bit outrageous and now consider beef a luxury item... but done like this, it's a luxury that should be created at least once.

Last night I found a beef roast at a decent price so I purchased it. It was a four-pound chuck roast and was the perfect size for my pot.

I call this recipe "five-ingredient" because that is literally all that is in it. Those ingredients were:

• beef roast
• one stick of butter
• one packet of onion soup mix
• one packet of ranch dressing mix
• one jar of mild pepper rings

That's it - nothing else. No salt. No pepper. Nothing. All you do is put the roast in the Crock-Pot, then dump the other things in. That's what I was told to do. However to evenly incorporate the other four ingredients, I broke the stick of butter in half and placed it on each side of the roast. Then I dumped the two packet mixes into the jar of mild pepper rings, put the lid back on and shook it up. That then was dumped in on top of the roast. I set in on high for about the first hour and a half then turned it to low. Five hours later and that thing was every bit of tender and falling apart that you can possibly think of. No knife needed.

The flavor shocked me. You might be thinking that it would be spicy with the peppers. Nope! Very mild, not much of a pepper flavor. I caught more of the vinegar flavor than anything else. You can relax, it wasn't an overwhelming vinegar flavor; just enough to taste. It was definitely worth the wait for both a new Crock and a beef roast.

As you can see in the picture, I made mashed potatoes. However, these weren't your typical plain run-of-the-mill potatoes. I roasted a head of garlic in the toaster oven. I believe I explained how simple roasting garlic was to do in a previous post. I mixed that into the potatoes, which I boiled until they were soft. Then I added some parsley, milk, and butter. Easy, simple and VERY tasty!!

I decided to make gravy with the leftover juice in the Crock-Pot. For that, I made a roux of half flour and butter. Cooked that down a bit and added two and a half ladle to the roux. This made a nice, thick gravy that didn't need any other seasoning.

I have a feeling that the combination of these ingredients sounds odd but it really did make an incredible-tasting roast.

I'm sending out a challenge for everyone else to try this and let me know what you think. I really don't think you'll be disappointed!