Crock-Pottery continues: French Onion Beef!

I seem to be on a crock-pot kick lately. It just seems to be the perfect thing, since I’ve been working long days and the last thing I feel like doing when I get home sometimes is cooking dinner. Today was a prime example of that.

So my latest crock-pot discovery out of my favorite Gooseberry Patch Slow-Cooker cookbook?

French Onion Beef.

And I can say without batting an eyelash that this is by far my most favorite creation that has EVER come out of the crock pot. By far. I’m pretty sure I almost keeled over and died after the first bite. Even better than the Beouf Bourgignon from a little while ago. (I KNOW. It’s almost a sacrilege.) And the best part? Ridiculously easy. Here we go.

French Onion Beef (contributed to Gooseberry Patch by Dawn Dodge from Roscommon, MI)

Ingredients:

• 1-1/4 lbs boneless beef round steak, cut into 6 pieces (I highly recommend using more meat – we felt like it disappeared too quickly)
• 8-oz pkg. sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup onion, sliced and separated into rings
• 10-3/4 oz. can French onion soup
• 6-1/4 oz. pkg. herb-flavored stuffing mix
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 8-0z pkg. shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Layer half of beef, mushrooms and onion in a slow cooker; repeat layers. Pour soup over top; cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours.

Shortly before serving, toss stuffing mix with its seasoning packet, melted butter and 1/2 cup liquid from slow cooker. Spread stuffing mixture on top of beef. Increase to high setting; cover and cook for 10 minutes, or until stuffing is fluffy. Sprinkle with cheese; cover and heat until cheese is melted. Serves 4 to 6.

It doesn’t look like much but WOAH. So, so good.

I served mine with Braided Cheese Bread, which is my friend Kristen from The Frugal Girl ‘s recipe. Absolutely delish (although mine looks a bit different from hers).

Tricks of the Trade:

• I couldn’t find a 6 1/4 oz pkg. of the herb-flavored stuffing mix, so I bought a bigger bag and used the leftovers on my favorite pork chops that I’m going to share with you later on.
• Like I said before, definitely use more meat. We felt like it sort of vanished.
• I only used about 4 oz of cheese and it still felt like a ton. This dish is rich enough to use very little cheese.
• Make sure your mushrooms are sliced thick so they don’t disintegrate after cooking for several hours.
• Be warned. This dish DOES NOT re-heat well. For something that’s absolutely incredible the first time around, it pretty much turns into an icky mush pile the second time. So make it when you have a lot of mouths to feed.

Despite not re-heating well, this will definitely be made again in our house. It took about 10 minutes or less to assemble in the morning, and another 10 minutes to get the stuffing mixture together in the evening. I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did!

Happy Thursday, and happy Crock-Pottering!