Easy Beef Recipes

Slow Cooker Swiss Steak

For the meat, you can use most any cut you like. The flat iron steak is an affordable and tender steak that doesn't take too long to cook. Round steak, chuck steak and sirloin will all work well, as will most any cheap cut of beef that needs to be braised for a long time to get tender. 

Heat the oil in a heavy skillet (cast iron is best) until the temperature comes to medium-high. In the meantime, you can use a meat mallet to tenderize the beef if you want. Not all cuts, particularly the flat iron steak, will need it.

Go ahead and salt and pepper the beef. You can also add the garlic, but just add a hint of it. You don't want it to overwhelm the other ingredients. You can sprinkle it with powdered garlic, or you can plug it with pieces of fresh, chopped or jarred garlic. You plug it by making small incisions in the meat and stuffing the garlic into them. Alternatively, you can hold the garlic back and add some fresh, sliced cloves to the top of the meat before loading it with the other ingredients.

After the skillet is heated, brown the beef on both sides. While the meat is browning, prepare your vegetables. This is also a good time to prepare the crock pot or slow cooker. Spray the inside with non-stick cooking spray. It would be even easier overall if you use one of those slow cooker cooking bags. With one of those, all you do is remove the food after it's cooked and throw the bag away. They work so well that most of the time the cooker doesn't even need to be cleaned afterward. You can go ahead and turn the cooker on to warm up. Depending on how fast you want the recipe to cook, you will cook it on Low or High (more on that below). If you're not sure, turn it on Low for now.

If you choose to use whole canned tomatoes, slice each tomato into several pieces, making sure they are all flat or can easily be flattened on top of the meat.

Cut the bell pepper in half height-wise (from stem to bottom). Clean out the ribs and the seeds. Flatten each half, trying not to break the halves into several pieces. Don't worry if it happens, though, it won't affect the flavor - just the way it lies upon the meat.

Peel the onion and slice it thin.

If the mushrooms were not already sliced in the package, slice them now. Most people use the button mushrooms because they are so common in the grocery store; however, this is also a good time to experiment with large mushrooms, such as the shiitake or the portabello.

You could use canned mushrooms, but they won't add much flavor to the dish. There is an exception to that: BinB Mushrooms. That stands for broiled in butter - BinB is the company that makes them. It would be hard to imagine a canned mushroom that tastes better than that one. They are a little hard to find these days, for some reason. Some have reported occasionally finding them at Big Lots, others have mentioned Kroger. Don't confuse the BinB brand with the Green Giant brand. They don't taste the same, but you might like them OK.

After the meat is browned and the vegetables are prepared, place the meat into the cooker. Add the vegetables by first placing the sliced onion on it to cover it uniformly. Next, place the flattened bell pepper over the onion so that it also covers the entire piece of meat. Next, do the same with the tomatoes, and then add the mushrooms. By now, some items may be slipping off the meat. Don't worry about that, especially if it is the mushrooms. You can change the order a bit if you like. You can do the onions, then tomatoes, then the bell pepper, but the pepper flavors the meat more if it is closer to it. You can put the mushrooms on before the tomato so the tomato holds them in place.

You will need to choose how long to cook the dish according to the cut of meat you chose. If it is a flat iron steak, about three hours on high, or four or five hours on low will be enough. If you cook it on low, more time wouldn't hurt much, but it is best to take the meat out of the cooker before it all starts falling apart - so use the shortest time you can.

The same thing  goes for sirloin steak - it won't need as much time to cook; however, if you choose something like arm steak, chuck steak or round steak, you will probably need more time - about four to five hours on high, or about six hours on low.

TIP: When cooking in a slow cooker of a Crockpot, you should never take the lid off for more than a few seconds, and even then, only if you really have to. The cooker spends the time building up the heat, and when the lid is lifted, that heat escapes quickly. If you need to check the meat for tenderness, try to do it while not completely removing the lid. In other words, quickly sneak in between the lid and the base. As soon as you think the meat is tender, this dish is done and should either be removed or put on the warm setting if your unit has one. Hamilton Beach slow cookers have that feature.

How to Further Simplify This Recipe

If you want to make the recipe even easier, you can do a few things that will get the dish cooking in no time.

- Skip the browning stage for the meat (a bit of a sacrifice on flavor)
- Use the crushed tomatoes instead of the whole
- buy a bag of frozen, chopped onion and use a cup or two of that instead of fresh
- use a 1-pound bag of chopped, frozen green peppers
- use canned mushrooms or buy them pre-sliced

When you layer the veggies on the meat, they won't all stay on - some will slide off. Don't worry about that - just get what you can on top of the beef and you can spoon the rest on before eating the meal.

TIP: If you are in a real big hurry, you can make this dish in a pressure cooker and it will take it less than 30 minutes to cook.