Today is Ben’s 5th birthday party! I simply can not believe 5 years has gone by since he was born. At his request, we are all heading into Legoland Boston for an adventure. It is still my turn for Sunday dinner, however, so I am going to write about my dinner plans in real-time and follow up at the end of the night with how things turned out.
Ben getting into his Lego building at Legoland today.
Given I’m not going to be home until dinnertime, I’m going to take the slow cooker route today. I have two lovely fridge-thawed Springdell London Broil cuts, along with that cream of mushroom concoction from Wednesday’s post. I was lamenting having not whipped the cream of mushroom mixture on Wednesday, so I’m giving it a quick whip before adding it to the pot. I also thawed a little one-cup brick of frozen Springdell beef stock that I’ll throw in as well, just for a little extra liquid. I have 2 yukon gold potatoes left in storage that I’ll roughly chop with the peels on, plenty of carrots to rough chop, onions to sliver, and garlic cloves to throw into the mix.
I decided to try an adobo seasoning as though I would like to mix up my own herbs and spices, I have 2 little boys get up and out the door within the next 30 minutes. I find adobo to be a nice shortcut spice mixture.
I gave the meat a quick sear on both sides before slow cooking.
This is the “before” picture of the meat, potatoes, garlic onions and spices. Everything was slathered in a mix of the cream of mushroom soup and the beef stock.
I still have roasted beets, greens and goat cheese, so I’m going with a side salad to accompany the crock pot surprise. (I know I know, I’m pretty boring and predictable with the beet & goat cheese salad. It’s just one of my favorite taste combos and I can’t not make it when both ingredients are readily available! We’ll get more creative with the beets soon, I promise.) Instead of my standard balsamic glaze, I’ll drizzle some of that fabulous Raspberry Vinaigrette on it to mix it up a bit. It’s so nice to have a choice of greens to dress these beets with. Tonight, I’m stacking these beet-y beauties atop the fresh peppery arugula.
We’ll see what 8 hours on low does for us. Ok so off to Legoland we go!
8 hours later…
Phew! That was fun, but we are wiped! Thankfully, the dinner turned out fabulous. Long live the slow cooker!
Sarah brought over a finished a test cake for her bakery. We had that for dessert, and I can assure you that whatever she was testing for, her cake passed with flying colors!
- 2 Springdell London Broil Steaks, about 2 pounds
- 2 Yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and roughly chopped
- 4 carrots, peeled (unless organic, then I usually just scrub them) and roughly chopped
- 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
- 1 1/2 cups of slow cooker cream of mushroom soup (see 2/4/15 post-or you could use a can in a pinch)
- 1 cup beef stock (preferably homemade with Springdell beef- we'll share how to make beef stock soon)
- 1tsp oil (canola is better for searing, but I used olive oil today)
- 1/2 tsp adobo seasoning
- Freshly ground pepper
- If your slow cooker browns things, place one tsp of oil into your slow cooker to and once the oil is hot, quickly brown your meat on both sides. You may also toss your onions and garlic in at this time. If you don't have a browning slow cooker, you can use a sauté pan to do the same, or skip this step entirely, it will still be good.
- Put onions, potatoes and carrots into the slow cooker and top it with the meat.
- A cover the meat with stock and soup.
- Sprinkle with adobo seasoning and about 1/8-1/4 tsp of th freshly ground black pepper.
- Cook on low for 8 hours. Serve with the sauce on the side as a gravy.
- This particular recipe is so good that it is the reason I'll be making and freezing blocks of fresh cream of mushroom soup for years to come. If you are not sold on the cream of mushroom soup idea, you could make this with just the beef stock and freshly sliced mushrooms, but it will just change the flavor and consistency of your sauce. You can always add more salt or spices at the end as well, but I just love that all the flavor in this recipe is coming from veggies rather than from a whole lot of extra sodium.