Buy an arm roast at the grocery store the night before, sleep.
Wake up, dump in arm roast, a can of french onion soup, top off with water or beef stock
Cover and set to Low, then go to work for the day
Return home in the evening, shred meat with some forks, serve on buns with cheese of your choice
It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.
For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:
For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp whole allspice
2 cinnamon sticks
1/3 cup packed (~70g) light brown sugar
1 large orange, sliced
Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.
If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.
One thing I love about owning an automatic pressure cooker is that the days of forgetting to prepare a meal before I leave for work are long gone. No need to slow cook, when you can have the most tender, delicious meat in under an hour. Most meats take 20 minutes. It’s healthier too because the faster cooking retains nutrients. And more flavorful because the pressure helps your sauce/seasonings infuse within the muscle fibers.
Zero-effort french dip:
It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.
For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:
For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:
Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.
If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.
One thing I love about owning an automatic pressure cooker is that the days of forgetting to prepare a meal before I leave for work are long gone. No need to slow cook, when you can have the most tender, delicious meat in under an hour. Most meats take 20 minutes. It’s healthier too because the faster cooking retains nutrients. And more flavorful because the pressure helps your sauce/seasonings infuse within the muscle fibers.
No kitchen should go without.