French Dip Sandwiches, Crockpot style

A French dip is basically just a steak sandwich that you dip into the juices the meat was cooked in. Doing it in the crock pot keeps the beef moist, and because of the long cooking time, you can take an inexpensive cut of meat, and make it very tender. You'll notice that there is a bit of coffee in this recipe. The only reason for the coffee is while I was making it one time, my husband came up behind me and scared me. I had the coffee pot in my hand at the time, and I ended up spilling it into the crock pot. I don't really know what it does, but it just doesn't taste as good without the coffee. You can either slice the meat or shred it depending on which cut of beef you use. I often use a chuck roast, which is easier to shred, however if you decide to use a sirloin it might be easier to slice. I normally serve these sandwiches with brown rice and some steamed broccoli. Horseradish on the sandwich taste mighty good too!

What You Need:

3lb chuck roast
2 cups beef stock
1 envelope of onion soup mix
1/4 c coffee
2-3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper



What To Do:

Season both sides of the roast with salt and pepper.
In a Crockpot/slow-cooker, whisk together the stock, coffee and onion soup mix. Give the cloves of garlic and little smash, remove the skins and drop into the liquid. Place the meat into the liquid, cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Remove the beef and slice thinly or shred. Strain the liquid and use as the au jus for dipping. Serve meat on hard rolls. You can top with cheese, sautee mushroom and/or onions too if you'd like.


Note: You can take the leftovers and make hot roast beef sandwiches out it by thickening the au jus into a gravy and serving over some bread. The 3lb roast makes enough for two meals for my family which is great because I love recipes that do double duty!