Pot roast is cooked in the slow cooker and the risotto cooks on the stove near the end. Au jus mix, Italian dressing mix and tomato juice are some of the tasty ingredients that the roast cooks in while in the slow cooker. The roast meat is shredded and cooks for another 30 minutes in the gravy while you make the creamy risotto.
Italian Pot Roast: I couldn’t find the oz sizes of au jus and salad dressing mix the recipe called for, my grocery store didn’t carry those sizes. So I used a 1 oz package of au jus mix and a 0.7 oz package of dried Italian salad dressing mix (I added a dash of Italian seasoning to be safe). Everything came out great seasoning wise. So don’t worry if the packages of the dried mixes are slightly less than the recipe calls for. The cooking time range for the LOW was a little odd to me, it seems like too big of a gap at 4 hours. So I cooked the roast on LOW for 8 ½ hours, shredded the meat in the slow cooker using two forks, stirred everything together and let it cook for another 30 minutes for a total of 9 hours. Also after a few hours I would break apart the sauce that was burning along the edges and move the sauce a little to recover the roast. I think it I cooked for the 12 hours the tomato juice would have burned.
Parmesan Risotto: Toast the rice in the olive oil first, on medium low heat, stirring constantly until the rice gets toasty with a little color. Then cook the rice 2 to 3 minutes between each addition of rice. To plate this dish, I put the risotto on the center of a plate, slightly flatten it then ladle the shredded roast over top, adding sauce from the slow cooker if needed.