A friend gave me a crockpot (oh, okay, “slow cooker”) for Christmas.
Give me your recipes!
I’ve had good luck with this site.
Crock Cook
One of the best things I’ve done with the crockpot is make homemade yogurt. You might want to peruse that site for other crockpot recipes, too.
A couple weeks ago I just threw a chicken in there with nothing but sliced onion and lemon. I made some risotto and ate it with tender, tasty, falling-off-the-bone chicken.
Whatever you make, get some crockpot liners. These things are da bomb!
Read the instruction manual carefully. It might have a guide, such as “add no more than 1/4 cup liquid to the dish”, which will be handy.
Did you get a round one or an oval one? The oval ones are intended for things like pot roasts and roast chickens. The round ones are meant for soups, stews, and beans. I have and use both kinds. Even though our family is just two humans and three cats now, it still makes sense to use a crock.
It’s very handy to be able to assemble tonight’s dinner in the morning and set the cooker going. I think that all of them have a removable crock now, so it’s possible to assemble tomorrow’s dinner tonight, put the crock in the fridge, and take it out and set it going in the morning.
You can use very cheap, tough cuts of meat in that thing, and it will come out very tender and flavorful. And I like to add a little wine as the liquid, usually.
this blog has been TOTALLY AWESOME (and I do not use AllCaps lightly!)
Started with chicken recipes … damn, the orange chicken looks really good. Like, really good. I’ll bookmark that site.
It’s a 3.5 quart oval – which seems big enough for someone who’s usually cooking for one, sometimes for two or three, but not usually feeding a crowd.
Thanks for the liner tip, freck – I’m all about making clean-up easier!
Here’s my slow cooker chili recipe that I make a few times a year. Feel free to tweak it, I change it a bit every time. Simply delicious.
Ingredients:
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 can dark red kidney beans
2 large cans diced tomatoes
1 can chili beans
1 pound beef stew meat
1 pound ground beef
2 small yellow onions
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp paprika
1 bottle beer, medium ale
1 tsp cayenne
4 jalapeno
1 bulb garlic
½ tbsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
a few dashes of tobasco sauce
Instructions:
Chop the onions, peppers and garlic. Saute them in olive oil until the
onions are browned. Throw in the Beef and continue cooking until the
beef is browned. When done, throw the mixture along with all of the
other ingredients, into a crock pot or stewing pot. In the crock pot
cook for 6 to 10 hours. Add a 2nd beer or water if more moisture is needed.
That is the site that I posted that has the yogurt recipe.
I use my circular crockpot (from my stepfather, circa 1975) for yogurt.
My oval crockpot is for everything else.
Not sure I understand the crockpot liner thing. My old school crockpot is kind of a pain, but not that bad, and my new crockpot goes right into the dishwasher and comes out sparkling clean.
Captain, that looks like a really good chili recipe; I am intrigued with the fact that you list two different kinds of meat.
Here is a thread from a few years back that has some good ideas.
I once cooked a whole bone-in turkey breast (according to long-lost crock cooker instruction book) and it came out really good. Now I just cut up a chuck roast (removing big white chunks of tallow) and put it in with a pinch of rosemary, a bay leaf, a chopped onion if you must, and a can of beef gravy or beef consomme. Let it simmer on low 8-10 hours. Remove meat (and bay leaf), de-fat the liquid (I have a gravy separator worth its weight in gold) - thicken the de-fatted liquid with cornstarch or flour and water, if you must. Serve with mashed potatoes. This is the bare basic recipe, I can make it in my sleep.
We use ours for soups and roasts and whatnot, it’s an oval. Didn’t realize the circle was specifically for soups! But it works just fine. Hamburger soup, roasts, maybe one of these days I’ll try a chicken.
Christmas Eve I made Spaghetti and meatballs which were most delicious (though I used more than just the spices in that recipe, I mostly merged mine and theirs).
Love the crock pot, though I tend to use it more in summer than winter (opposite of many people) because it doesn’t heat the house like the oven does.
An oval? Then it’s probably just the right size for a whole chicken. Remove excess fat from chicken. Cut an onion into quarters, put two quarters in the body cavity, one quarter in the neck cavity, and dice the other quarter to sprinkle on top of chicken. Cut one or two stalks of celery into pieces, put quite a lot into the body and the rest in the neck cavity. Do the same with peeled carrots, or baby carrots. Add some white wine, let cook all day, make gravy from the liquid. Now you have tender chicken, suitable for serving with rice or mashed potatoes on the first day, and have chicken’n’dumplings on the second day, and sandwiches or stirfries will take care of the rest, if there’s any left.
Or take a chuck or round roast, throw it in the crock, sprinkle with red wine, and top it with minced dried onion. Let it cook. Very simple, very good. The chuck roast will have a lot of fat in it, so be prepared for shrinkage, but it’s nice and flavorful.
Don’t put an expensive cut of meat in the crock. Those cuts can take quick high cooking. Use the crock’s strengths.
I use mine year-round. I try to avoid turning on the oven unless I am heating the house…I hate to heat up the kitchen and then try to air-condition my way back to comfort.
100% agree - and we have never had a bad pot roast using this method. Plus, slap everything together before you go to bed, turn it on low and wake up to that smell of finished dinner! We usually do this on a Saturday night, have a great Sunday lunch/brunch with plenty of leftovers for great roast beef sandwiches the next few days.
BTW, do NOT lift the lid for any reason while food is cooking!
Last night mom sent me home with the bone from the spiral-cut ham. When I got home I put 2 cups dry pinto beans in the crockpot and covered them with water, let them soak overnight. Today I rinsed the beans, added the hambone, an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves, salt, red pepper, black pepper and oregano and turned the crockpot on high. When it comes to a boil I will reset it to low and enjoy my ham and beans for 3 days.
You need some rice in there, too. Just take my word for it. This is one of the few times that it’s acceptable to lift the lid, to add other ingredients. Otherwise, you need the lid to stay on, because the whole point of a slowcooker is to cook things slowly, and heat will escape each time the lid is lifted.
Or you can cook the rice separately, and put a little rice in the bowl when you dish out the beans.
Pork roast! Very easy, and very good.
You need a pork roast, a medium onion and about 8-10 ounces of pineapple juice.
Slice the onion, and put most of it in the bottom of the crockpot. Add the roast, salt and pepper as desired, put the rest of the onions on top of the roast. Add the pineapple juice, and about a half-cup or so of water. Let it cook till it’s done (use a meat thermometer). Should take a couple of hours on low.
OK, my husband doesn’t really care for pork roast…but he’s going to be out of town for 10 days, so I know what I am having for dinner. I wonder if I should add some crushed pineapple to that? I think that I’ll have a baked sweet potato for one meal of it, and then add some barbecue sauce to the next meal.
Crushed pineapple would be good, but I’d add it towards the end of the cooking time. Otherwise, I think it would just be mush.
One roast
One packet Lipton Onion Soup Mix, dry
Two cans Campbell’s Golden Mushroom (or Beef Mushroom, your choice) soup, undiluted.
Pop everything in to the pot, put it on low (I use the eight hour setting) and you will have a fall-apart roast that has its own gravy. Add sliced root veggies (potatoes, carrots, onions, etc) to the last hour of cooking if you like.
I had no idea these existed.
I don’t have a problem getting my crock clean (yikes, that’s a typo waiting to happen), but the liners would be perfect for cooking steel cut oats. I’ve always wanted to make them in the crock pot, but feared the mess.