Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches

These delightfully greasy sandwiches are one of my husbands favorites, and I am currently writing this with a bellyful of them. They are easy to make. The trick with these, like with any beef roast in a crock pot, is to make sure not to cook it too long. I used to put dishes in the crock pot and leave them all day long, and wondered why my pot roasts came out so tough. I now have a programmable crock pot, and do my 2-3 pound roasts for only about six hours.

There are two primary roast cuts available at Kroger, the bottom round roast and the chuck roast (there are more cuts that you can braise, but these two are the ones I find most often at Kroger--the local Publix has a larger variety of meat cuts, but I don't go there unless I have to since they are more expensive). Bottom round roasts are leaner, and thus more prone to drying out if you leave them in the crock pot too long; they also don't have as rich a flavor as a chuck roast. The chuck roast has a lot more fat and connective tissue and so a lot more meat ends up going to waste, and it can be difficult to carve up (especially with the thin slices that these sandwiches need).

Anyway, to the recipe:

French Dip Sandwiches
2-3 pound beef roast
1 packet dried onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
Sliced Swiss cheese
Fresh deli hoagie rolls

1. Mix together the beef broth and onion soup mix in a crock pot. Place the roast in the crock pot and cook on low for 6 hours.

2. Remove the roast from the crock pot but keep the liquid in the pot warm. Slice it as thinly as possible. Slice each roll and put the beef slices on the bottom half and cover with cheese.

3. Turn the oven on broil. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and put both the top and bottom halves of the sandwiches on the sheet. Broil in oven to 3 minutes.

4. Spoon the liquid from the crock pot into small bowls or ramekins and serve with sandwiches.

Make sure you have plenty of napkins!