Pot roast

We're having a snowy sort of day here. Just enough to make us change our plans (library and a few errands) and decide to hole up in our warm house today. I had already planned pot roast for dinner tonight, but now we get to enjoy its homey aroma all day long.

This is probably not something Scooter will even agree to taste, but less picky children might. I'll be popping a gluten-free bread mix in the bread maker in a little bit so that he can have his grilled cheese sandwich tonight.

Somewhere over on my other blog, there's a recipe for pot roast that involves French onion soup mix and a couple cans of cream of mushroom soup. It's an easy recipe and makes its own gravy, but there aren't any good gluten-free substitutes that I've found, so I'm experimenting with the following today (will update later with my verdict).

Crockpot Pot Roast
Ingredients:
Good-sized chuck roast or other cut that's good for slow-cooking (ours is 2 1/2 pounds--I expect lots of leftovers!)
Potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, other veggies you might want to include
Broth
Salt and pepper

• Chop up veggies. I used 3 medium-sized white potatoes, 3 ribs of celery, and 2 handfuls of baby carrots, plus half an onion.
• Saute chopped up onion until starting to brown. Set aside.
• Brown roast on all sides.
• Place potatoes on bottom of crockpot. Top with half of onions and then the roast. Put rest of onions on top of that.
• Put veggies around sides of roast.
• Salt and pepper as desired.
• Pour broth (I used a vegetable broth that's just veggies and spices--no ambiguous "natural flavors" or other questionable items) over the top. I filled the cooker about halfway.

Most similar recipes I've seen seem to call for about 4-6 hours on high or 8-10 on low. I started the cooker out on high for a couple of hours and then set it back to low.

So far, it smells good and looks to be cooking nicely.

ETA: The roast was incredibly tender and tasty. Could have used a little more salt (can always add that per individual taste once it's served). Might also use less broth next time since the juices from the roast added quite a bit to the volume. Could probably get away with not browning the onions first, as I didn't notice them one way or the other. But overall, very tasty and filling, an entire meal in one pot.