Recipe: slow cooker beef

I have a very old slow cooker but I reckon it's still working as well as any of these youthful, new fangled things you get today.  It has three 'speeds' - low, high and auto (which starts off high and then switches to low after a while - or so it says).

I found a silverside joint in the freezer and as there will be four of us for lunch tomorrow (three meat eaters), I decided to use it.

This is what I did.

Ingredients:

one medium onion, peeled and cut into 8

1 medium carrot, chunked

2 small ribs of celery, chunked

A little bit of swede (leftovers alert!!)

some beef stock

a dollop of grain mustard

a good splash of white wine

pepper

2 bay leaves

water.

Method: (in the evening)

Tip the veg into the bowl, add the wine, stock (I used granules and one little pot of that jelly-ish stock), herbs, mustard and pepper.  No salt because I reckon the granules are likely to be salty enough.

Place the joint on the top and sort of wriggle it down a bit.  Add water until it's about one inch from the top.  Put the lid on and set to auto.

Leave to slowly cook overnight and next morning.

In the morning, when you're ready, remove the meat and leave to stand, covered.
Strain the stock and make gravy your usual way.

Really simple but very delicious!

What I did was took out the meat and let it stand, covered for a while.  I strained some of the stock and, as it had a good strong flavour already, just thickened it with Thickening Granules.
I carved slices off the joint and twenty minutes before serving time warmed up the slices in the gravy which was just simmering.
Gorgeous, melt in the mouth, flavoursome meat!

Now I have left over enough meat for two dinners with gravy to go with it, a big bowl of stock for gravy in the future and some vegetables that were in the slow cooker.  I'm not sure how much flavour they have but I can make some bubble and squeak for sure.  Brilliant!

I can't really call it frugal but it's certainly much better value than one would at first think.