Savory Sicilian Crock-Pot Roast

Here’s another meat-and-potatoes, comfort food recipe to warm your body on a cold winter’s night. It’s a meat and healthful vegetable meal, bathed in a rich Sicilian sauce seasoned to cause your family and friends to rave about it and ask for more.

Ingredients:

2 ½ to 3 lb round, rump or sirloin tip roast
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, quartered
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
2 carrots, scrubbed and thinly sliced
3 cloves minced garlic
1 6 oz can tomato paste
1 cup red wine
1 ½ oz dried porcini mushrooms (chop and reconstitute in 1 cup hot water for 15 min.)
1 Tbsp sea salt
1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning
1 to 2 bay leaves
28 oz can whole tomatoes

Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven and brown the meat. Place in crock pot. Then sauté onion, celery and carrots for 8 minutes; add garlic and sauté for another 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and stir. Pour over roast in crock pot. Pour wine into the Dutch oven, and cook to scrape up the brown bits. Pour the reconstituted porcini liquid through a paper towel-lined strainer into the wine. Then add the mushrooms, salt, Italian seasoning, bay leaves and tomatoes (lightly chopped with juice), stir and pour over the meat in the crock pot. Cook for 8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high. Discard bay leaves, and serve with mashed potatoes.