Beef Tips in Mushroom Gravy

Hello all!
So sorry about my hiatus from blogging this week, I got silly busy at work and decided to do a bit of leather work because I'm cheap and I figured I could make a "sandwich box" cheaper than if I buy one. For one those things are ridiculously hard to find, and when you do find one, they're usually antique which is AMAZING, but also synonymous with expensive. The one I really liked cost $1500 but it came with a cute silver sandwich box and flask... Ok, let me explain, Matt and I recently got into fox hunting... er... chasing. Here in Maryland we don't hunt foxes any more, but we chase them. Its all about the game of chase, and we have lots of fun doing it on horseback! Now the big issue is I'm also a techie nut and like to have my electronic leash (aka smart phone) with me at all times. I can't do this now because I'm afraid it will fall off while we're riding and I'm not supposed to have a saddlebag, instead you have a sandwich box! Because that's what ladies do when we hunt, we eat sandwiches.
Anyways, in the mean time I've been making some lovely crockpot meals and one of the best ones has been:

Beef Tips in Mushroom Gravy

I know it kind of looks like Alpo, but that's what REALLY tender beef looks like after sitting in a crock pot for 8 hours, YUM!

First thing is first, here is the original link:

http://www.laaloosh.com/2008/06/21/beef-tips-in-mushroom-sauce-crock-pot-recipe/#.UCkTofc5xF5.pinterest

Now for great food you need to start with great ingredients. I started out with 4 lbs of Chuck roast. 2 lbs will be used for this recipe and 2 lbs for Beef Stroganoff later (Now that one REALLY looked like Alpo, but it tasted really good too!)

This cut of meat comes from the front shoulder portion of the cow and usually has pretty good marbling (fat veins through the meat) and cooks up nice and tender.

Mmmmm! Marbling! This is where all the good flavor and juiciness comes from.

You can actually grill this whole thing for a nice juicy piece of meat, you just need to sear it and then cook it on an upper rack over time so it doesn't burn, but still cooks how you like it. Instead of this, I decided to trim the larger pockets of fat and cut it into cubes for beef tips and beef stroganoff.

Approximately 1" chunks

Once you've cut up the meat, you're ready to go!

Ingredients:

2 pounds lean chuck – cut in 1 – 3/4 inch pieces
1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 pkg. onion soup mix
12 oz beef stock

8 oz Baby bella mushrooms (or any mushrooms you'd like!)

Directions:
Put meat in crock pot.

Add mushrooms and pour onion soup mix over meat.

Add soup, beef stock and stir.

Cook in crock pot all day on low (or high for at least 4 hours).

Serve over rice, egg noodles (what we did), or with potatoes. You can also serve it with green beans as a less starchy alternative.

This recipe was ridiculously easy. Less than 30 minutes of prep, followed by 15 minutes when you're ready to eat boiling the noodles and away you go! I would put this on the "Matt can do this by himself" scale of cooking which means REALLY easy!

This would be fantastic on a cold winter day or a crisp fall evening. It was so nice to come home to this being done and ready to go! I wish I would have had green beans with it because they would have complimented the meal really well, but just as it was it was DELICIOUS! On the other hand the original recipe called for diet sprite instead of beef stock and although that is nice because it contains 0 calories, I just thought it would be a foul addition and therefore went for beef stock instead. I think I made the right choice since Matt called this his favorite recipe of the week.
I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did, and as always:
Happy eating!