Slow cooker Coffee Beef Pot Roast

2 large onions sliced
1 boneless beef joint, about 3lbs - I use brisket without too much fat.
250ml/8 floz strong good coffee
50ml/2 floz soy sauce
1 garlic  clove, crushed
1 tsp dried oregano or the leaves off several sprigs of fresh marjoram
2 bay leaves
Cornflour
 
Put half the onions in the slow cooker.  Top with the beef and the remaining onions.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Cover and cook on low for 6 - 8 hours. Lift out the beef to rest and thicken the sauce with cornflour.  Three teaspoons of cornflour is about right.  Serve the beef with the thickened sauce.
Variation : use mushroom soy sauce and add some little mushrooms to the sauce for the last half hour before you thicken it.

It doesn't taste of coffee at all.  That is the odd thing - it is a gloriously rich beef gravy.  And so easy, you don't even have to brown the meat off first.

My mother found the recipe in a slow cooking book and gave it a whirl when we were staying, with good strong filter coffee.  I was a bit doubtful about it and about caffeine at tea time and if it would affect sleep.  My tea-only sister in law was even more doubtful, but it was a real hit with all of us. 

4 very generously, 6 with the usual (which for us probably means at least 2 and spuds  ) veggies on the side.

Just don't try delicately carving it, OH calls it 'managed falling apart'.  But then that is what he says about most of my pot roasts.