Crock Pot Pastrami

You may as well call this pastrami Suleiman the Magnificent.
Because of its distinctive onion hat. Historical puns!

There's something to be said for food so easy to make that a blindfolded dog with some pretty severe physical handicaps stands a chance of getting it right. Aside from the obvious benefit of cheap canine labor, sometimes you just don't have the energy to make anything real. And so you end up eating take out, or ramen, or take out ramen. But not the actual delicious Japanese dish of noodles, meat, broth, and whatnot. Takeout top ramen from a plastic pouch. Because I'm sure hipsters have invented that restaurant by now. The point is, we make bad decisions when we're tired and hungry. Fortunately, with a small bit of planning you can turn reasonably few ingredients into absurdly delicious food. Also, I've been making a bunch of healthy food lately, so it kind of feels good to just make a giant slab of red meat.

Ingredients:

1 Whole Pastrami (Any reasonable deli or butcher counter should be able to get you this. Mine is about 2.5 pounds. It's literally just the entire slab of meat that they'd slice pastrami from if you ordered it like a normal person)

2 Carrots

2 Zucchini 

1 Standard Issue Onion 

2 Cloves Garlic

2 tsp Olive Oil

1 TBSP Water

1 Standard Issue Human's pinch of Black Pepper

Salt

So, the first thing you'll notice about this recipe is that it's barely a recipe at all. Remember, the idea is to make something easy and delicious. So we're taking an already cooked piece of delicious smoked meat, and gently heating it to render out all of the fat and make it absurdly tasty. We're also throwing vegetables on the bottom to soak up all of that smoky, peppery goodness as it cooks out of the pastrami. Kind of like a turducken, if you don't think about the fact that it's in no way like a turducken. Anyway, the first step on your path to glory is to cut your zucchini and carrot into chunks. Personally, I prefer cutting them into rings. They're large enough to not just turn in to mush, but small enough to easily grab with a fork. But ultimately the star here is the meat, so the way you cut the vegetables that are here to play backup to said meat really isn't that important, no matter what their IMDB pages say. Dice up your onion and garlic, and toss all of that veg in the bottom of a crock pot (And no, i don't care what brand of slow cooker you use. But crock pot has become the generic term. If I needed a kleenex, I wouldn't ask you for a generic facial tissue of your choice, so just shut it). Add in your oil, water, and black pepper, and get ready for the existential dread you'll feel about salt.

Breakfast of champions. Maybe not the champions who
win awards, but certainly the ones who win at life.

So here's the deal. Good pastrami is already pretty salty. You're still going to need to add in a little bit to season the vegetables, but how much kind of depends on your starting point. You can estimate based on your previous pastrami experiences, assuming you've had any, you can just slice off a piece of pastrami and taste it to get a feel for its saltiness, or you can wildly speculate based on nothing. No matter which of these methods you choose, you've got about a 50/50 chance of getting it right, but at least you'll feel better knowing that you tried. Kind of. Anyhow, salt your vegetables, and stir that nonsense up. Then toss your pastrami haphazardly on top of that mess, preferably with the fatty side facing down, and let it cook on low for about 6 hours. You'll know it's ready when you literally get woken up by the deliciousness wafting down the hall and realize that you fell asleep while you were supposed to be cooking food for your blog. Then shred that meat up with any forks, bare hands, bear hands, or other implements of culinary destruction you have lying around, and enjoy! Don't let the fact that it's 90 degrees outside stop you.