Give Your Pot Roast a Second and Third Life: Leftover Recipes (2024)

Are you looking to stretch your grocery budget? These leftover pot roast recipes will stretch one roast into several meals without getting bored of the same leftovers.

Leftover Pot Roast Recipes

In this economy, it is important to use up everything that you have. Many people waste a lot of food just by throwing it away when they are tired of eating it. Sometimes you put it away in the freezer, with good intentions of using it later….but I prefer to use it up right away, if possible.

This is an example of what I recently did with a family-size roast. We butcher our own beef and I usually get my roasts cut to 2-3 pounds each, so that is the size roast that I used. It was a nice, meaty roast, not a bone in one. We stretched this roast to be 3 different (and delicious!) meals.

Cooking a Roast

Choose a good roast to cook up first. We love a nice chuck roast because they can get so tender when they are cooked low and slow which is just how I like to cook them.

Place the roast in your slow cooker with at least an inch of water around it. You can add in spices if you’d like. We always like a little salt, pepper, and garlic or we use Homemade Onion Soup Mix.

These keep the flavor so that the roast tastes good but so that you can also add more to it later.

Cook the roast on low for 6-8 hours (the longer time if starting from frozen). After this, your roast is cooked through and ready to be used for multiple meals!

Here’s how we served a single roast to our family of 4 over several days.

Day 1 – French Dip Sandwiches

Put the roast in the crockpot (frozen) in the morning with plenty of water and seasonings (I use a steak seasoning blend). Cook the roast all day and that evening on low so it’s nice and tender.

Tip: If you haven’t done a roast in the crockpot before you may want to check out this article on making Shredded Beef.

For our first meal, we enjoyed the shredded roast on buns and used the broth that the roast simmered in for dipping (french dip sandwiches). Serve alongside some fresh vegetables orHomemade Tater Tots.

Save all of the leftover broth and beef to be used in meals for the next few days.

Day 2 – Beef and Vegetable Soup

For our second day of roast, I used the crockpot and made a beef/vegetable/noodle soup.

I used approximately 1/2 of the beef that was left and added in some vegetables, beef broth, seasoning, and water. Let everything cook together on low all day in the crockpot. About an hour before serving it, I added in some small alphabet noodles that I had on hand.

For my vegetables, I used one small summer squash (leftover from the garden), fresh mushrooms, carrots, leeks, onion, celery, and potatoes. You can use any combination of vegetables that you like or have on hand.

Tip: If you happen to have lots of summer squash on hand, shred up the extras while you are making this dinner and either make Cheddar Yellow Squash Biscuits for a side or Yellow Squash Chocolate Doughnuts for dessert.

Day 3 – Chinese Shredded Beef

For our third day of roasting, I’m making shredded beef. This is a recipe that I got from an old friend, and it is a great way to serve up the leftover shredded beef with a Chinese twist.

This recipe uses one pound of leftover beef but you can make more if you’d like to. Serve it over rice.

Tip: Make this meal even easier by using Cook Ahead Freezer Rice

Need to print this to add to yourRecipe Binder? Get the recipe below:

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas on stretching a roast the next time you cook one up!

After serving these meals for three nights in a row, we still had enough leftovers of the soup and Chinese Beef and Rice meal to enjoy for several lunches!

More Ideas for Leftovers

Looking for more creative ways to stretch your grocery budget? Check out these ideas for using leftovers:

• Creative Ways to Use Leftovers
• No Food Waste: How to Use All of Your Food Scraps
• Must Try Cheap and Easy Recipes With Ground Beef
• How to Cook a Whole Chicken Easily and What to Do With It
• Turkey and Feta Quesadillas Using Leftover Turkey
• Stretching a Buck Lasagna
• Money Saving Meals With Dried Beans

More Ideas for Saving Money

• Useful Finds from Antique Stores
• Best Money Saving Tips
• 12 Simple Ways to Save Money on Groceries

What’s your favorite way to use leftover pot roast?

This post with Leftover Pot Roast Beef Recipes was originally published on Little House Living in November 2011. It has been updated as of March 2024.