Easy, convenient and delicious, pot roast made in a slow cooker is one of my go-to comfort foods. I used to bake it in the oven until I learned that it comes out even better in my crock-pot. It's fast and simple. Clean up and storage is easy if I use a Reynold's liner.
Recipe: Peel and cut potatoes, carrots, and onions into chunks then place in lined slow cooker. Place a 3 pound or so chuck steak on the vegetables. Top with either a packet of Lipton Onion Soup mix OR diced onions and salt. Options include whole tomatoes, celery, turnip/daikon, and even cabbage.
Cover with lid, turn to low, and it's ready 8 hours later.
Here in the islands we eat it with Japanese-type white rice, a staple introduced to Hawaii by laborers brought here to work on sugar and pineapple plantations after the Meiji Restoration and Admiral Perry's gunboat diplomacy opened Japan to the West.
The first Japanese contract laborers arrived in Hawaii in 1885.
The story of how the Tokugawa Shogunate was replaced by the Meiji Restoration is fascinating. To make a long story short, the Shogunate was overturned to restore the Emperor to power because of a policy fight. A group within the ruling class believed that in order to save their nation from Western domination, Japan needed to learn about Western technology and societies. They had seen China, a country revered by Japan, conquered by the West. The Tokugawa Shogunate had closed the country and wanted to continue to keep Japan safe through protective isolationism. The clashing policy views ended when the group favoring learning new technology won, overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate and restoring the Emperor to power. The Meiji Restoration was able to rapidly transform Japan into a "modern" country and protect itself from Western conquest, becoming the only Asian country neither colonized nor conquered by the West. Indeed, even emulating the West, it became an imperialistic power, for which, ironically, the West went to war against Japan.
As an aside, some of the Tokugawa clan, seeing the Shogunate's inevitable demise, fled to Hawaii where Tokugawa descendants live today. Some continue to meddle in politics as we speak . . . ;) . . . lol.
Gee, who would have thought slow cooker pot roast would lead to musings on history.