With inflation and the Trump tariff taxes, grocery prices are insane, and meat prices lead the pack, but sometimes you want meat.

I was surprised that the price of a pot roast was actually less per pound than some hamburger offerings. Yet, a delicious pot roast dinner feels a lot more special than a hamburger on a bun.

You can see that this boneless chuck roast is $7.99/pound, which is less than some varieties of hamburger.

Back in the 1960s, my sister Carol was having dinner at a friend’s house. Her friend’s mother made a pot roast, and Carol thought it was the most delicious pot roast that she had ever had. She felt so strongly about it that a few weeks later, she made it for our family. Those were the days when people were discovering using convenience foods, like condensed soups, as ingredients. It turns out that her friend’s mother was doing just that, and the pot roast recipe became an absolute classic because it was not only delicious, but it was also incredibly easy to make.

The other day, my son asked me if his girlfriend could come over for dinner. “Of course,” I said. Usually, I keep my cooking simple on weekdays, so my goal was to make a simple dinner that tasted great. I went back to my mid-century roots and resurrected Carol’s pot roast recipe.

I’m using a 3.5-pound pot roast.

In a bowl, mix up one can of undiluted condensed cream of mushroom soup with a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce. You can omit the soy sauce if you wish.

The mixture will look like this when mixed.

Add some oil to a heavy pot and brown the pot roast on all sides using medium heat.

When browned, remove from the heat and sprinkle on a package of dry onion soup mix. If that is too salty for you, use some sliced onions instead. However, using the soup mix is very convenient.

Pour the soup/soy sauce mixture over the roast.

Add your vegetables on top. I’m using some carrots and baby potatoes. You could use cut-up regular potatoes just as easily.

Cover and place in a 325°F (160°C) oven for 3.5 hours. For a smaller pot roast, use less time; for a larger one, use more time. The roast should be fork-tender.

When done, remove the vegetables to a serving bowl.

Here is the pot roast. It was so tender that I had to be careful when removing it to a cutting board. The juices make an instant gravy.

Plated up. It was really delicious. I’m serving it with a slice of “All American Beer Bread.” That recipe is coming up later in this post.

Today was a typical retirement day for me. I listened to some medical lectures to keep myself current. I then drove out to my friend’s worksite and brought him a cup of coffee and borrowed a ladder.

I was off to the self-car wash to clean Violet the camper van, and I needed the ladder to rinse off her solar panels. Afterwards, I felt an urge to go to Goodwill to check if they had any bread makers. Dear reader, you know that I have been posting about saving money using a bread maker. If you have followed my posts you likely realize that I already have several bread makers, so why in the world would I want another one? To be honest, it is just one of my quirks. I love machines and I love how subtle differences between manufacturers can impact outcomes. When you study machines you need machines to study (awkward sentence-I know).

Naturally, I wasn’t going to spend a fortune, but my eye spied a dusty, but cleanable bread maker from the mid-1990s for only $5.99! I had to have it, and I used it to make bread for today’s dinner. Of course, I scrubbed it from top to bottom before using it. Let’s go over that recipe, shall we?

Here is my $5.99 find.

The recipe that I used is from the book “More Bread Machine Bounty.” My only addition was to add 1 teaspoon of Italian Seasoning to give it more of a savory flair. The recipe is called “All American Beer Bread.” I used the basic (white) bread setting which worked out fine, but I probably should have used the whole wheat setting as the recipe was more than 50% whole wheat flour.

Adding the ingredients took all of 5 minutes. I weigh a lot of my ingredients because it is not only more accurate, but also less messy.

The final product. This was a 1.5-pound (750 g) loaf. The crust was very crunchy, and the bread was the perfect foil for the pot roast.

The crumb was soft and the crust was crunchy!

It is my goal to show others that cooking economical meals can be both simple and delicious. A pot roast may be a bit of a luxury for a weekday meal in 2025, but there will be plenty of leftovers for sandwiches. Additionally, the bread was very inexpensive to make, but it tasted like it came from a fancy bakery.

We all have to eat, and cooking from scratch is one of the easiest ways to save money. I mentioned in that past that one of my daughters makes scratch meals for 4 and divides the food into 4 containers for 4 days of suppers. This way she has a delicious hot meal within minutes of coming home from work. She rotates around 10 different menus to give her variety over the weeks and never feels deprived while saving time and money.

Dear reader, I would like you to consider the art of simple scratch meal preparation.

Peace

Mike