Cooking in the Crock-Pot is very easy but sometimes I want it shamefully easy. Recently I decided to make a pot roast as simply as humanly possible, modifying a disreputably convenient rule I found online.

I got a three-pound hunk of chuck roast, salted and peppered it and braised it in butter in a large pan. (This was the only remotely difficult part of the procedure.) When the meat was browned on all sides I put it in the slow-cooker, deglazed the pan with red wine and poured the resulting liquor into the pot.  This all took about ten minutes.

I added to the pot a 12-ounce carton of organic condensed cream of mushroom soup and then poured in about 16 ounces of store-bought organic French onion soup, enough to barely cover the meat.

Do you see the beauty of this now?  No chopping!  The only time I even touched a knife was to cut off two ounces of butter for the braising.

I set the Crock-Pot on low, let it do its thing for about 12 hours and then served myself up some delicious pot roast, cackling fiendishly at my slothful but wholly successful enterprise.

Ha ha ha!

UPDATE — this rule works just as well for beef stew, simply substituting two or three pounds of beef chunks for the post roast.