Dilly Beef Sandwiches

Election Day and parent-teacher conferences and the November dark and the school humming with the particular energy of a building that knows its rhythms are about to change — Thanksgiving break is in three weeks, the semester is winding down, the students are either doubling down or checking out, and I am, as always, trying to catch the ones who are checking out before they check out entirely, because a student who checks out of Dickens at seventeen might check back in at twenty-five, but only if someone noticed they were leaving.

I had a conference with Marcus Rivera's mother this week — Angela Rivera, class of 1998, who sat across the table from me and said, "Mrs. Feldman, you look exactly the same." I said, "Mrs. Rivera, you are an excellent liar, and I appreciate it." She laughed. I remembered her — the quiet girl in the third row who wrote a paper about her grandmother's kitchen and whose son is now writing about pear trees and Zora Neale Hurston. I told her Marcus is exceptional. She said, "He gets it from you." I said, "He gets it from you, and you got it from yourself, and I just showed you where to look." She cried. I handed her a tissue. Parent-teacher conferences are the most emotionally honest exchanges in the American education system, and I have been having them for forty-two years, and they never get less moving, and I will miss them. I will miss them enormously.

I made a beef and barley soup — thick, dark, hearty, the food of November, the food of evenings that arrive at four-thirty and stay until seven-thirty in the morning. The soup simmered all day while I conferenced, and I came home to a house that smelled like food and not like absence, because the slow cooker had been doing the cooking while I was doing the talking, and the partnership of the teacher and the slow cooker is a November arrangement that has served me well for decades.

The slow cooker is the most faithful colleague I have ever had — it asks nothing of me during the day, complains about nothing, and delivers exactly what it promised by the time I walk through the door. After a conference day full of tissue boxes and forty-two years of memories sitting across from former students who are now parents themselves, I needed a meal that had already done its own work. These Dilly Beef Sandwiches are exactly that: set them before the first family arrives, and by the time Angela Rivera has made me cry and you have made her cry and everyone has said something true, the beef is falling apart in the best possible way, tangy and tender and ready, the way a good student eventually is.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 8 hours (low) | Total Time: 8 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

3 to 3 1/2 pounds beef chuck roast, trimmed
1 jar (16 oz) whole dill pickles, undrained
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 envelope (1 oz) ranch salad dressing mix
8 sandwich rolls or hoagie buns, split
Sliced provolone or Swiss cheese, optional

Instructions

Load the slow cooker. Place the trimmed chuck roast in a 4- to 5-quart slow cooker. Pour the entire jar of dill pickles (with their juice) over and around the roast. Scatter the cubed butter over the top and sprinkle the ranch dressing mix evenly over everything.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours, or until the beef is very tender and shreds easily with a fork. Do not lift the lid during cooking.
Shred the beef. Remove the roast to a cutting board or large bowl. Discard the whole pickles. Using two forks, shred the beef into coarse pieces, then return it to the slow cooker and stir to coat with the cooking juices. Let it rest in the juices on WARM for 10 to 15 minutes.
Toast the rolls. If desired, lightly toast the cut sides of the sandwich rolls under the broiler for 1 to 2 minutes until golden.
Assemble and serve. Pile the shredded dilly beef generously onto the bottom half of each roll. Top with a slice of provolone or Swiss cheese if using, then close the sandwich. Serve immediately with extra cooking juices on the side for dipping.

Nutrition (per serving)

Dilly Beef Sandwiches — The Slow Cooker That Waited for Me