Pot Roast Versus Stew . . .

Pot Roast!  I LOVE pot roast.  It was always my favorite.  I think mainly it was because of the potatoes.  I will admit it, I love potatoes.  Who does not??  I like to say it is because my grandfather (my mother’s father) was Irish and I cannot help but love them, it is my heritage.  They do show up on my body too!  They show up around the hips.

My mother made the best roast.  I liked the version she made and she called it beef, browned potatoes and gravy.  She served this meal at her restaurant, Granny’s Kitchen, as well.  We all have followed her recipe but no one has ever made it quite like hers.  No one has ever made it taste as good!  It was not made in the oven, it was all done on top of the stove.  There has never been a better gravy. She would flour the potatoes and the roast seemed to make it’s own gravy.

Since I fail at making it, I just tend to make a roast.  My mother always said that baking meat tasted totally different than any other way and you could not beat a baked roast!  The potatoes do taste exceptional.  The children have left home and that means all of the extra mouths in way of friends have left as well.  It seems that a roast is entirely too much food for us.  (It is just me and Wessie.)  I do make meals and freeze the rest in little containers for him to take in his truck so that he has plenty of good meals rather than meals that are not good for him.  Still, I find that a roast, even a small one is way too much.

I have taken to asking the butcher for one pound packages of stew beef.  I make tons of things with that.  I have even baked it in the dutch oven as a roast and it works just fine. Well, the point of this story is . . . after Christmas I made a stew on top of the stove with all of the extras, potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, all goodness!  As I was dishing the meal up for us, (just the two of us) something occurred to me.

I wish I had thought of this as the children were younger, it would have been so easy!  Did anyone ever notice that stew is just actually pre-cut roast and the fixings?  How easy this would have been and how much time would have been saved at meal time. I would not have had to cut up all of the plates for the children.  It would have already been done!  Haha.  Just a thought for you mothers who still have younger children.  Make the stew instead of the roast!!!

I already had thought of the spaghetti issues.  I always would take a large bowl and break the spaghetti noodles into 1 – 1 1/2″ pieces before I boiled them.  This saved the cutting up the spaghetti afterward for the children.  Why did I not think of stew??!!

Just a thought! (And a brilliant one at that, if I must say so myself!  Haha!)

(The oven baked meat does taste better actually.  The crunchy outside type of crust on the meat is delicious.  The stew beef, however, is extra tender.  But, the ease of stew is wonderful!)

Option:  Sometimes I take the stew and fry it a bit in a large skillet to sort of brown/crisp/burn the food a little to get that extra crunch.