ReluctanceTango
ReluctanceTango's JournalYes, Virginia, there is a Low Carb Pot Roast
This is a great meal to throw together in a crock pot before work, and it's ready when you get home. If you live in a normal-sized house, you will smell it as soon as you open the door.
Ingredients
*Crock pot liner
*4-5 stalks celery, cut into bite-sized chunks
*1 large onion, cut into bite-sized chunks. Or go totally retro and use a pound of peeled fresh pearl onions, or 1 package of frozen.
*8-16 ozs whole mushrooms, quartered
*1-2 16 oz bags of radishes, or buy whole and trim yourself. Just make sure you have at least a pound of the bulbs. These are your potatoes, and nature made them in bite-size form!
*3-4 stew bones, if you can get them at your grocer's
*3 TB minced garlic (we love garlic, so reduce or remove this if you don't)
*2-3 TB olive oil, butter or half of each!
*1 2-3 lb Chuck Roast. If you can get it bone-in, all the better!
*Ground black pepper to taste
*Salt to taste
*3 TB dried, minced onion flakes
*4 tsps low sodium beef bouillon granules, or 4 packets Herb-Ox sodium free beef bouillon
*2.5 tsp garlic powder
*2.5 tsps onion powder
*1/4 tsp dried parsley, crumbled
*1/8 tsp paprika
*1-1.5 qts Beef stock. We use low-sodium or unsalted
*2 TB Worcestershire sauce
*1/2 tsp Liquid Smoke
Directions
1. Line crock pot with liner. Add vegetables. Tuck the stew bones into the veggies. Add minced garlic.
2. Salt and pepper both sides of roast.
3. Heat olive oil or butter in a skillet over medium-high heat and wait for it to shimmer. Sear pot roast on all sides until golden brown. This is the key to having a brown, not gray, pot roast with a slow cooker.
4. Put the roast in the crock pot on top of the veggies. The veggies actually take longer to cook than the meat, which is why they go on the bottom and the meat on top.
5. In a small bowl, mix together seasonings and top the roast with them. Use a knife or spoon to spread them evenly over the surface.
6. Add liquid ingredients. Pour the broth slowly and more around the roast than on top of it, so that you don't remove too much of the seasonings from the meat. It needs flavor love, too.
7. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. My particular crock pot runs hot and is programmable, so I usually set it to cook on high heat for about 15-30 minutes so that everything will come up to temperature quickly. Then the pot automatically switches to warm, which is low on other crock pots. Go with what works with your machine.
8. When the roast is done, gently remove it to a platter. Discard the stew bones. Slice the roast, and arrange the cooked veggies around it.
Serve with a light salad, and toasted & buttered low-carb bread. My husband loves his roast with some horseradish, so I always put it out for him.
Note 1: I used a range of amounts for some ingredients, because not all crock pots are the same size. If you have a mammoth one, like I do, then you can go crazy with the veggies. If you don't, then use the lower amounts. And if your crock pot is on the smaller side, or not oval, then you may need to cut the roast in half to get it to fit. It's not a biggie if that's the case. It all goes to the same place, after all.
Note 2: If you prep your veggies and the spice blend the night before, you have most of the hard work done. Then all you need to do is toss the veggies in the pot, sear and season the meat, and throw in the liquids. Turn on the crock pot, clean up, and go.
Note 3: I don't think this is Keto. I'll defer that determination to those who follow it. Probably some of the vegetables would have to go, or go down in quantity.
Note 4: Of course, making pot roast in the oven the old-fashioned way is always an option. Everything is pretty much the same with the prep, save for adding a cup more beef stock, and cooking everything in a covered pan at 325˚F for about 2-3 hours. I don't remember anymore what the internal temp is supposed to be, but I'm not sure it matters when you cook anything at that temp, that long. I do remember my grandmother's trick of putting foil between the pot and the lid to get a good seal so that the meat would get more tender and not dry out. In all the time I lived with her and went to her house for dinner, she never turned out a dry pot roast. Not once. The foil was her secret weapon.
The Best Stupidly Simple Entree--Ever: German Mustard Marinated Pork Tenderloin
German Mustard Marinated Pork Tenderloin
Ingredients
*1 Pork Tenderloin
*Salt & Pepper to taste
*1/2 Jar Fischer & Wieser German Mustard and Fig Sauce, or Fig Mustard Sauce. The kind I had was the German Mustard, but I think they've changed the name to Fig Mustard. Either will work.
Directions
Sprinkle tenderloin with salt and pepper. Let sit for five minutes.
Put tenderloin and sauce in a zippie bag. Marinate in fridge for two hours or overnight.
Preheat oven or air fryer to 325˚F. We used the air fryer.
Heat skillet on stove, medium-high heat. Remove tenderloin from marinade. Sear the tenderloin for 1-2 minutes each side until brown.
Put the tenderloin on a rack inside a roasting pan. Cook for 18-25 minutes, basting all sides with leftover marinade every 5-10 minutes. Tenderloin is done when it reaches 145˚F inside.
Let rest, covered with foil, for five minutes.
Slice and serve with a salad or whatever veggie side you prefer.
This tenderloin is good enough to serve for a fancy dinner, and yet it's stupidly easy to make.
Our kind of meal.
Mackerel Yakisoba
When my cholesterol numbers went bad, I was prescribed the usual statins. I had dangerous side effects from each one we tried. My doctor told me to make up for it by sprinkling my daily salads with a heaping teaspoon of ground flaxseed and eating fatty fish a few times a week. Mackerel qualifies, and it's super cheap, to boot!
Ingredients
*16 ozs long, thin pasta cooked according to package directions. Traditional is soba noodles, but I use low carb edamame + mung bean spaghetti. A few packages of ramen noodles, without the seasoning, will also work.
*2 TB Oil. Traditional is sesame, but any "plain" oil will do, like vegetable, sunflower, grapeseed, etc.
*2 TB minced Garlic
*Salt & White Pepper, to taste
*1-2 tsps Curry Powder, to taste
*1 7.5 oz bag Cole Slaw mix (cabbage + carrots)
*1/2 of an onion, sliced thin
*1/4 cup low sodium Soy Sauce
*1 tsp mirin. Can use white wine or vinegar instead.
*1 15oz can mackerel, drained
Directions
1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet or wok. Add garlic for around 30 seconds.
3. Add veggies, curry, and salt and pepper to taste. Sauté until tender.
4. Add pasta, mackerel, mirin and soy. Break up the mackerel into chunks. Stir until everything is warmed through.
Serve.
Notes: This can be chilled for about 2 hours and served cold. It's good that way, too.
The veggies can be anything you like or have extras of that you need to get rid of: Zucchini, yellow squash, bell pepper, snap peas, green beans, etc. Just be sure to make them bite-sized.
