Kraft Recipe Makers: Making Family Meals Easier! #cbias #shop

The following #KraftRecipeMakers post has been brought to you by a Collective Bias social shopper insights study. As always my thoughts, opinions, and easy meal enthusiasm are my own. Thank you!

Football season is coming. And with it, so do all the ways I yearn to keep our family meals easier each weekend. One great way to do that, is to find any way provide our favorite menu items faster – easier – and if possible, tastier. And that is why I wanted to test out the Hickory Bbq Beef variety of Kraft Recipe Makers.

Because one of our all-time easy meals, is crafting up barbecue beef sandwiches. You slow-cook the beef in your crock pot, shred it after 8-10 hours, and sauce it up before piling it high on a bun to serve. {Told you it was easy!} So what intrigued me the most was the two-part sauce system that Kraft utilizes in its recipe meal kits. And you can bet I hopped right over to my local Walmart to pick up a box to put to the test!

First, this Kraft meal kit utilizes a “simmering” sauce consisting of brown sugar and cider vinegar that will season and marinate your roast as it cooks. The recommended size of roast for the Hickory BBQ Beef Kraft Recipe Makers is 2-1/2 pounds. Our beef roast was nearly 4 pounds, and did just fine with the generous bottle of  brown sugar and cider vinegar.

But before applying the finishing sauce, we made sure to take out a good pound of meat to keep our sandwiches good and saucy. I also prefer to use a sirloin tip roast instead of a chuck roast for our barbecue beef. The sirloin tip aspect helps to keep our meat in strips creating a heartier sandwich. And since the Kraft Recipe Makers recipe included a “simmering” sauce with a cider aspect; I also wanted to top our subs with apples too!

In getting started, we traditionally add a bit of water to our slow cooker to keep our roast from drying out or sticking while it begins to cook. So for this barbecue, we added 4oz of apple juice {I used an apple cider version}. I poured a little to cover the bottom of the slow cooker and then the rest poured over top. Then we added the simmering sauce and cooked our sirloin tip roast on low for 6 hours. At that point, we let the crock cool, flipped the roast, and put it in the refrigerator overnight to soak and marinate.

In the morning, we flip the roast again, and set it to low till we eat 4 hours later. And that idea I was so fond of trying? I not only poured a little apple juice in with the roast to offset the cider vinegar used; But I also used butter and apple juice to saute a large sweet onion and apple too. Then I used them to top off our barbecue sandwiches and it proved amazing! Add on some chef-style shredded Kraft Triple Cheddar cheese and you’re taste-buds will be in heaven!

Prior to serving, we sliced the meat in large chunks and drained the ample amount of stock created from slow cooking the roast. Afterwards, we toss the roast back in the crock and applied the “finishing” barbecue sauce. I preferred to save the stock {as suggested in the recipe} and ladle in a little as needed to keep a good saucy consistency throughout the day. And both the Kraft Recipe Makers seasoning sauces combine to create a positively drool-worthy sandwich.

For this football foodie’s dream, I made sure both the apple and onion was sauteed super soft. But I think next time I’ll saute the onions soft and keep the apples out till the very end, leaving them with more crunch. But even the Husband couldn’t help but rave about the new apple addition. It really does balance out the snappy bbq sauce for the perfect sandwich.

And with that, I’m totally looking forward to trying more of the slower cooker {and skillet} meal recipe options. The next one we’re set to explore is the New England Pot Roast variety. But its also great to know I can hop over to Walmart anytime for a great ready-made meal kit for spicing up the pantry items I already have on hand.

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Product Information: You can find more about the different quick family meals that Kraft Recipe Makers in your Walmart pasta aisle, the Kraft website, or the Kraft Foods Facebook page. For this campaign, I’ve also included a Linky below for you to explore as well. Enjoy!

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and their client. As always, my thoughts – opinions – and overall enthusiasm are my own. Thank you. #KraftRecipeMakers #cbias #SocialFabric