Awesome Slow Cooker Pot Roast

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite crockpot recipe.  It's rediculously simple and tastes so good!  The meat makes its own gravy as it cooks!  A hot, comforting meal that's ready for you when you come home.  I like to add some veggies (carrots, potatoes, onions, celery) to mine to make it a one-pot meal and usually serve it over rice or egg noodles.  This time, I only had a 2.5lb piece of beef so I halved the recipe and we ate it plain like a stew.  I've made the full recipe before and it does freeze well if you want to do easy freezer meals (like this one isn't easy enough to begin with, though!).

Now for an interesting story...because every recipe has one.  One of the ingredients in this recipe is onion soup mix.  I usually buy whatever is on sale or cheapest for these types of ingredients and Kroger brand was significantly cheaper when I went shopping.  I made the meal on a Friday and when I went shopping the following Monday, the cashier notifies me that my Kroger Plus Card shows that we may have purchased a product that was recently recalled.  It turns out that the onion soup mix was being recalled for potential Samonella contamination.  Awesome!  Bad news is that I had already used some of the product.  Good news is that 1) We ate it and didn't get sick (I suspect either because it cooked in the crockpot for over 8 hours and probably killed anything bad or ours wasn't contaminated to begin with) and 2) by having Kroger stalk our buying habits with the plus card, we now know that our product is bad.  I had leftovers (at least 2 more meals worth!) but out of fear I'm throwing them out.  The remaining product is being returned to Kroger on my next shopping trip and we'll get a full refund.  Wonder if they'll refund me the cost of the other materials like my meat, condensed soup, and veggies, too...sheesh.

Try to ignore my photo...I know it looks like...vomit...or something.  Do you realize how hard it is to photograph certain types of food??  And I must have stirred mine too much this time because it was much more shredded than normal...usually it's chunks of meat rather than shreds.  Anyway, I assure you it tastes AWESOME, just as the namesake says it will :).

Awesome Slow Cooker Pot Roast
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Yields: 12 Servings

Ingredients

• 2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup (I like to sub a cream of celery soup for one of the cream of mushrooms and always use the low fat versions...you can use your favorite cream of whatever soup)
• 1 (1 ounce) package dry onion soup mix
• 1 1/4 cups water (if desired, for a more sophisticated taste can substitute with a dry red wine)
• 5 1/2 pounds pot roast
• 3 large potatoes, scrubbed and diced (optional)
• 1 large onion, sliced (optional)
• 3 carrots, peeled and sliced (optional)
• 2 stalks celery, sliced (optional)
• 3 Tablespoons flour (optional)

Directions

1. If desired, add vegetables to bottom of slow cooker.  Then, mix in cream of mushroom soup, dry onion soup mix and water. Place pot roast in slow cooker and coat with soup mixture.
2. Cook on High setting for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low setting for 8 to 9 hours.  If a thicker gravy is desired, add about 3 Tablespoons of flour to the crockpot 30 minutes before serving and stir well.

Source: Modified from All Recipes