How to Make a Roast in the Crockpot

Ingredients:
3-4 pound boneless chuck roast
1/2 onion
1/2 green pepper
2 stalks celery
English Prime Rib Rub

 This is what you want to buy. It's labeled Beef Chuck Roast Boneless:



Spray the inside of your Crockpot with Pam. Pam is the best. All the other sprayers suck. You can also use one of those bags. I don't care for them.



Cut and rinse your vegetables. I take out the ribs of the green pepper. Probably don't need to (or cut the ends off the celery) but I did.



Chop them and throw them in the bottom of the Crockpot.



This is the ridiculous amount of beef that I bought. That's 7.5 pounds. I had to split it into two different Crockpots. It's a little brown because it was "aged" in my fridge for 4 days. It's still great.



Sprinkle one side of the beef with the rub. I probably would have put a bit more, but making all these roasts over the holidays made me run out. :(  I don't always have green pepper and celery, so that's when I use more of the rub also. It has a great flavor! But these vegetables plus the little bit of rub will be perfect.



Turn it over and put it in the Crockpot on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle the other side. Sorry this one is blurry. I'm no photographer.



That's it for the ingredients. No water needed.

Today I set the Crockpot on HIGH for 6 hours because I didn't get it in until after 9 am and didn't want to wait until 7 pm to get it out. I might switch it to LOW if it looks like it's cooking too fast (maybe looking dry or something like that.) Most of the time I cook it on LOW for at least 10 hours. Here's my best test to see if it's done. If you open the lid and press down on the roast with a wooden spoon and it falls apart, it's done. Don't take it out too early or you'll be slicing it. It's not horrible that way, but the best is when it falls apart.




And if it does get done early, that means I have time to shred it all, and put it in the juice. There probably won't be much juice. If I need to add something (or want to make gravy) then I will supplement with some Beef Base from Penzeys. Dissolve about 1/2 to 1 tsp in a cup of water, and add that to the juice. Delicious!

I'll update this post with pictures of the roast after it's done later.

After 3 hours. This really shows you the difference between the cookers. One is a Crockpot (the white one) and the other is a Hamilton Beach. The Hamilton Beach seems to take longer. Also, there is a LOT more liquid in that one. Not sure why.






The Hamilton Beach has a thermometer probe. The roast in that one is at 94 degrees. The roast in the other one is 79 degrees. I don't know what this means (besides the obvious) but I thought it was interesting. Maybe the more liquid raises the temperature?? It's a mystery.

It was done after about 5 hours on HIGH. Passed the wooden spoon test. It was steaming hot so that's why the photo looks like that.



The Crockpot had not much juice, the other one a little more. Together, it was about 4 cups.

(I forgot to take a picture of the other pan. This is hard.)

The real hard part: shredding the beef. Buying chuck means lots of fat marbling through it. It's why it tastes so great. But it's a pain in the ass to shred. 

Took me about 30-40 minutes to shred both roasts.

Then I mixed the meat and juice and the beef base all together. Time for a sandwich. Or maybe have it over some rice. Or buttered noodles. Or make some beef stew. Mmmm.