This was one of the few recipes Grandma had written down for preparing a roast. I think that's because she really didn't need a recipe for cooking beef. By the time I knew her, she had had decades of experience, which served her well. She was an expert at making it fall-apart tender.
Grandma copied the recipe onto the back of a card that my sister Amanda had made for her:
Notice that Grandma had made a small note on the inside, "Recipe on back."
And this was it:
I've never had much success preparing a roast in the oven, and so I resorted to using a slow cooker here, which is my default preparation method. I mixed the following ingredients right in the crock of the slow cooker:
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey (it called for 3, but we all prefer meat that's not so sweet, I reasoned)
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon season salt
I skipped the water because a slow cooker tends to produce that on its own. I turned to coat the three-pound roast on all sides and then put a layer of cut onion on top of the roast. It was done in just under four hours on high.
It turned out fine, though not exceptional, and I thought it wouldn't have hurt to double all of the sauce ingredients, even with a smaller roast. I'd probably also recommend adding a few cloves of sliced garlic into the mix.