I was surprised and delighted to see that Anne had apparently made a pot roast the very same day that I was feeling kind of, you know, pot roasty. Maybe it's the weather? Is pot roast contagious, like the boogie woogie flu? Perhaps!

You know, when I first moved out on my own, a crock pot and a chunk of chuck roast is the very first actual new recipe I ever tried. Luckily, I sat next to a coworker who told me the easiest recipe ever, which was "a chuck roast, two cups of water and a packet of Lipton Onion Soup mix, plus carrots and stuff if you want." I combined that shit and voila! Served to my boyfriend with some instant mashed potatoes and some of those rolls from a tube and I had created the Brady Bunch dinner of the type I always longed for when negotiating  my mother's strange bulgar meatloaf.

Now, my tastes have evolved and I can't really tolerate all the salt and chemmies in those "packet" and "can of soup" recipes, but I still enjoy a nice pot roast, because comfort food? Check. Easy? Totally check. Thus, here are the very easy steps for making your very own pot of joy, complete with pictures to prove how crazy simple it is.

Step 1: Start with a pot! It's right in the name, so this is a requirement. I usually am impatient with my pot roasts, so I do it on the stove rather than a crock pot, but you could do it in the oven too. There are no rules! Make shit up!

Step 2: Roast! Just to prove this is serious cheap eats, you can see that this gigantic chunk of beef was less than $12. Plus, marbling, which is apparently a good thing.

Step 3: If you ask me, these are the bare minimum ingredients, but really, all you need is the onion/celery/carrot component of a mirepoix, some kind of thickening agent, whatever seasonings float your boat, and water. I don't have an onion here, because Esteban loathes finding onion chunks in his edibles, so onion powder is standing in for the third component of the mirepoix, and what chunk of meat doesn't need garlic? So, to sum up, here's my mise en place: Worcestershire, soy sauce, kosher salt, all-purpose flour, your basic generic black pepper mix, onion, butter, garlic, baby portabello mushrooms, baby carrots, chopped celery and beef stock. And in a colander in the sink, potatoes of the red variety.

Step 4: This is totally optional, but I usually brown the meat in some butter, just because ugh, grey meat.

See? That looks so much better, plus the yummy brown bits are useful later.

Step 5: Start dumping stuff in the pot. Start with the stuff that takes the longest to cook, like the mirepoix elements and the garlic.

Step 6: Once that stuff is good and golden, throw in the spices and the liquid. You could use water or fancy it up by using stock or demi-glace or some combination of those things. You could even throw that little bit of wine from last night's dinner in there. The roast won't care.

Step 7: Throw a lid on it and forget about it for about two hours. Then, add the mushrooms, potatoes and anything else that you might want, like canned peas if you're really going for the Midwest Lutheran experience. Then walk away and watch Gossip Girl. When you come back, it will look like this.

Optional Step: Gravy! I didn't take a picture of this, but I used a little sauce pan to whip up a quick roux with equal parts butter and flour. I browned it until the flour started looking a little nutty brown and then, after I pulled out the chunky things (meat, potatoes, etc.) I whisked the roux into the pot so that there was like a gravy thing happening and brought it up to a very quick boil. It took, like, maybe five minutes but it's totally optional!

Okay done! Eat up! It's pretty much a complete meal, and for that Very Brady touch, you can whip up that No Knead Bread Dough or just crack one of those tubes of biscuits. I don't know, I always feel a little guilty when a meal comes together this easily, but meh, I'll learn to live with it. --Weetabix