I have seen various recipes about cooking a beef or pork roast in the crockpot with a jar of pepperoncini and finally tried it today. I had bought a new crockpot recently. My old one always felt too hot on the bottom and in fact one day caused my Corian-like (but not Corian) counter to actually split apart from the heat one day. They were able to repair it so that you cannot see a thing but it worried me. I had heard that the newer crockpots were hotter than the old ones and had put it off to that. But when I was at a friend’s recently she had a brand new crockpot and it didn’t get near as hot on the bottom as mine did. So I tossed mine and bought a new one. This was the break-in night.

The recipes varied quite a bit, with some having just a roast and a 16 ounce jar of pepperoncini dumped over it to others that had the roast with garlic cloves inserted in slits. Some said put the roast on slices of onion; others just had the roast sit in the crockpot. Some had a packet of dry Italian dressing mix sprinkled over the roast; others had Italian herbs. Some had a can or bottle of beer poured over the roast; others had a cup or two of beef broth. One had both. One had nothing.

What I did:

one beef roast

1 onion, sliced

salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a packet of Italian dressing mix

1 16 ounce jar of pepperoncini and liquid

1 12 oz bottle of beer

enough water to cover the roast

I laid the onion slices on the bottom of the pot, put the roast on top, sprinkled the roast with salt, pepper, garlic powder and Italian seasoning mix. I then poured the whole jar of pepperoncini over the roast, and added the beer. I then added enough water to cover the roast.

I cooked it on low all day, from 8:30 am to about 6pm. Low on this crockpot has the liquid sputtering and the lid spitting out bits of hot liquid. This is apparently normal for newer crockpots. On the plus side, the bottom of the crockpot did not emit much eat so I can probably forego my double-stacking of hot plates and so forth to protect the counter.

When I went to slice the meat for sandwiches, it literally fell apart. Self-shredding roast is not a bad thing for sandwiches, but obviously these do cook much at a much higher temperature than I’m used to. I used to leave food in crockpots all day and sometimes a roast would still be rare.

I put the shredded meat on a French roll along with some shredded mozzarella. On mine, I added some of the peppers (after tearing of the stems) and onion. Oh, heaven! A spicy, tasty, juicy, sweet and hot sandwich. Really, really good.

Alas, it was a bit spicy for the kids even though they did not put any peppers on their sandwiches. One thought it was fine after sprinkling a bit of salt on it to cut the spice. They both liked them, but would have preferred the meat a bit milder. I think the leftovers are all mine. And there are way more peppers than I needed for a roast of this size. Or else we like meatier sandwiches.

Notes for next time: Fewer peppers, more water.