Hungarian Pot Roast

This is my second post about pot roast, and my second Hungarian recipe. Hmmm. I don't know anything about Hungarian food, but I have discovered it usually includes paprika and sour cream. That's not a bad thing.

I've been mostly sticking to my South Beach Diet plan, with lots of help from Kalyn's Kitchen, a blog out of Salt Lake City that includes lots of SBD recipes. So that is where I came across this recipe. It looked really good and, it was made in the Crockpot. As you may have guessed from my last post, I received a Crockpot from a good friend named Michelle, and I am having a blast with it.

Cooking with a Crockpot is easy, but deceiving. This recipe has lots of out-of-the-Crockpot steps. But, it all came together easily enough with the help of my other good friend, Mr. Dutch Oven. (My favorite Christmas gift from last year.)

First, I browned a rump roast in the dutch oven, making sure to get a nice brown crust. I plopped that in the Crockpot and dumped in the onions into the dutch oven with some paprika. I had to add a little more olive oil than was listed because the paprika was starting to burn.

Once the onions were just beginning to brown, I added them to the Crockpot, along with a can of diced tomatoes and a couple of cut-up red peppers.

I poured half a box (about 2 cups) of organic beef stock into the dutch oven and let it boil over medium heat until it reduced to about 1 cup.

Maybe it was a little more than 2 cups. Anyhoo, when it was reduced, I poured it over the rest of the stuff in the Crockpot and seasoned it with a lot of black pepper.

Kalyn says to cook it on high for 4 hours, but my schedule didn't work out that way, so I left it on high for about 3 hours, and then turned it to low for oh, another 8 or so hours (overnight). Slow cooking is slow cooking, right?

So when I got up the next morning, I scooped the roast out and strained the broth/juice into the dutch oven, catching the vegetables and setting them aside. Then I again simmered the broth over medium heat until it had reduced by half. I also skimmed some fat off the top.

Kalyn says to whisk in 1.5 cups light sour cream, but I just used my whole pint. I think I had more gravy than she did anyway. *Shrug*

I heated up the sour cream gravy for about 5 more minutes, whisking often and scraping all those yummy brown bits into it. We weren't eating it right away (it was morning, after all!), but I had a few tastes and it was rich and beefy. I plated one up for the camera, then packed the rest in containers for work lunches.

It's not the prettiest dish, but it sure tasted good. The vegetables melted into a kind of mush due to my overcooking, so I wouldn't recommend that necessarily. On the other hand, it was nice to bend it to my schedule and have it still turn out rather good. I added the rosemary sprig in the title picture for color, but it turned out that a couple rosemary leaves added some brightness. Brian also thought it needed some acid, so I suppose you could squeeze a lemon wedge over it.

Please see Kalyn's blog for the recipe.

Peace!