One of my favorite meals of the week is Sunday dinner. I love it because most of the family comes home for this dinner if they’re able, and we often have friends come eat with us as well.

My mother-in-law always had the same thing, every single week. Roast with potatoes and carrots. The roast was usually beef, but sometimes pork. It has to be the simplest meal ever, and it tastes so good.

I like variety, way more than my family. I often change it up and do something with rice, like teriyaki chicken or pork, or maybe something Mexican. But even then, we continuously come back to the roast and veggies. I think the reason is because it’s easy but tastes good, and when we walk in from Church and the house smells like roast and potatoes, there’s nothing better.

Today I’ll share my process, because there’s not really a recipe. The nice thing about this dinner is that it’s super easy to adjust for the number of people who might show up.

We use 3 main ingredients:

The Roast – We prefer a beef roast like a chuck, but have used pork or moose roasts as well, 2-4 pounds works well depending on how many people there will be.

The Potatoes – I like a creamy type like a generic white or red potato. I prefer not to use russet potatoes as they seem to disintegrate during the cooking process. We usually do 15 – 20 average size potatoes, but 10-20 works depending again on how many you’ll be feeding.

Carrots – Any type of carrot works here. We’ve used rainbow carrots, fresh carrots, carrots that’ve been in our root cellar for 6 months. They all come out tasting great. We do at least a dozen carrots, but if we’ll have a lot of people we do 18-20 carrots.

Optional – We do have a couple of items we add once in a while. Onions and garlic. I sometimes add a whole onion with the top cut off and outer dry layers peel off (my husband likes this once in a while). Once in a while I’ll add a whole head of garlic with the top 3rd cut off (unpeeled). I usually use the garlic in the gravy because it roasts really well.

Process – I put everything into a large roaster pan with a lid, layering them with the potatoes on the bottom, the carrots next, and the roast last. I like this layering rather than the reverse because the meat gets a fair amount of browning as it cooks this way, rather than being totally submerged. I then season with salt and pepper, fill up the pan to cover the vegetables, and put it in the oven.

The oven temperature and time can be adjusted as well. If I put the roast in before Church and I know I have 4+ hours before we’ll be eating I set the oven temperature to 325 degrees. If I will need it done in 2 1/2 – 3 hours, I increase the temperature to 350-375 degrees. But it needs to be in the oven at least 2 1/2 hours but I wouldn’t go longer than 5 hours either.

Once the time is up, I remove the roast, potatoes and carrots to serving dishes and then set the roasting pan on the stove top on a burner to heat to boiling. I mix water and flour together and thicken the remaining juices for a nice gravy. If I put a garlic head in then I’ll squish that out into the gravy as well.

We often put bread in our bread machine so that it’s finished cooking about 30 minutes before we eat as well. This makes a great dinner that doesn’t take long to get in the oven, and cooks without any other work until the end. It’s a hardy meal as well, that fills everyone up.

This is one of my kids favorite meals, and is always requested when they’ve been gone for a while. It their comfort food I guess. I like it because it’s fast and easy but a really nice meal that feeds a crowd when needed. Plus, if there’s any left over, the potatoes are great for breakfast the next morning, and the roast works great for sandwiches for lunch.