So there I was on Tuesday, rummaging through my chest freezer in search of some long-forgotten bit of beef to cook for a Wednesday-night dinner. I try to make sure we have a home-cooked dinner (or the leftovers thereof) four nights a week, with Friday being the official Chinese Takeout Night.

Lo and behold, what should come to hand but a pair of small beef roasts, one bottom round and one tip, leftover from a sale I pounced on at a local grocer. I always keep an eye out for cheaper cuts of beef and pork, as they can actually give great flavor if treated right.

The trick to rendering the less-prime cuts of beef tender and palatable is cooking slowly at low heat, preferable in a flavorful liquid of some sort. This technique is called braising, and it allows the connective tissues in the meat to relax and dissolve, leaving you with a tender and juicy piece of meat that will almost carve itself.

I quickly decided my best course of action was to deploy one of my very favorite cooking appliances: my slow cooker. I actually have two, a small one fit for a batch of overnight oatmeal or a single batch of chili and a huge one fit for cooking a party-size batch of meatballs or holding two small beef roasts along with plenty of veggies. I cleared a space on the kitchen counter (always a challenge with two kids in the house) and did my prep for the morning.

That's the whole secret to making pot roast in a slow cooker: preparation. The night before, you can do all your vegetable peeling and chopping, leaving just a bit of work for the next morning. I prepped all my veggies, put them in a glass bowl and covered them tightly with plastic wrap until the next morning.

When I got coffee at 5:25 the next morning, I took the roasts out of the fridge and set them on a plate to come to room temperature before browning.

An hour later, just to annoy my better half, I put my big cast iron skillet on over medium-high heat and rubbed the roasts down with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. When the skillet was hot, I drizzled the first roast with canola oil and into the skillet it went. Nothing beats the aroma of browning meat first thing in the morning, and when my older son hit the kitchen for breakfast he wanted to know if we were having "big steak in the morning." What a kid.

When browning a roast, be sure and use your long-handled spring-loaded tongs, so you can turn the meat and brown it on all sides. If it's oddly shaped, you might have to hold it briefly on a side. It shouldn't take more than a minute to brown a side, since cast iron retains heat very well and will keep the browning going strong.

When the first roast was done, it went into the slow cooker, soon to be joined by its mate. While the pan was hot, I deglazed it with a half-cup of red wine I found hanging around in the refrigerator. You could also use water. Deglazing, for those of you unfamiliar, is when you hit a hot pan with a cooler liquid, the resulting reaction making all the little bits of meaty goodness come loose and begin to dissolve in the liquid.

Leaving the pan drippings to cool a bit, I loaded the slow cooker with goodies. Several cloves of garlic, whole, went in, followed by a whole chopped yellow onion, carrots, a bay leaf and (of course) as many red potatoes as I could fit. The pan drippings went over the top, followed by enough beef stock to cover the roasts by an inch. Don't fill the pot all the way with stock; you're not making soup!

I like to do a bit of "top seasoning" before I shut the pot. I grab whatever spice blend I've been reviewing or a healthy dose of DeYoung's Fore Seasons and do a little shaking and sprinkling. It makes the potatoes taste great!

That's it. Put the lid on, set the cooker on low and walk away. No matter how good it smells, do NOT open the cooker for at least 8 hours. Go to work, go fishing, go take that all-day nap you've been promising yourself. Your patience will be rewarded.

To serve, use a slotted spoon to scoop out all the veggies, then fork the roasts out onto a cutting board. They won't quite fall apart to the touch, but a good threatening with your chef's knife should be sufficient to render them into slices.

Now, what to do with the juice? If you've got some spare time, put the meat and veg in a large oven-proof bowl and hold them in a warm oven while you make gravy with either flour or cornstarch. I don't recommend reducing the juice, as there's a fair bit of salt floating around in there and the reduced liquid will taste like you licked a beach.

Or you can do what I do: Put some of the juice in a small bowl and dip each bite of roast or potato. That, my friends, is suburban soul food at its finest.

Got a question? Comment? Topic you'd like to see covered? Drop me a line, anytime!