Any one have some tried and true slow cooker recipes? I love Crock Potting in the winter…making stew, etc, but I’m not very original. Share your knowledge, oh Wise Chefs.
Thanks 
Lorie
I don’t use the crock pot to “cook” I use it to avoid cooking. Throw in a cheap cut of meat, some vegetables and a little seasoning and walk away from it for 8 hours.
But here are three things that have always worked for me: garlic, worcestershire sauce and red wine. Try them individually or in combination. Don’t overdo, a little goes a long way.
I’m with kunilou here. Just chuck in anything, go easy on the fluids and leave it. Chili is great (chunks of beef, not ground), curries too. There are 1400 recipes here and I think I’ll try some of them soon. The Bowl of Red chili with acup of beer looks interesting although I wouldn’t use water I’d use tinned tomatoes.
I wouldn’t call it a recipe, since it doesn’t really have a unique list of ingredients, but I got raves a couple of times with a pork burrito filling. Just take some cheap pork (country-style boneless ribs are good), and crock it for several hours with your favorite spices, some salsa, and some chicken broth. When it’s starting to fall apart, attack it with a fork to shred it. Adjust the seasonings as hot as you want. Put it in tortillas with refried beans, cheese and what have you, and it’s sorta yummy.
I don’t have a crock pot, but can I get the same results using a covered Dutch oven on minimum heat for a few hours? Or is there something special about a crock pot?
Some of this stuff looks good…
I’ve made beef stew twice so far this year with my crock pot. How I do it is kinda cheating, but…
I buy 2 packages (about 1 lb. each) of pre-cut up stew meat. Then the grocery store I shop at sells vacuum packed packages of already cut up veggies (new potatoes, celery, baby carrots, and onion) as pot roast mix - I buy one of those.
I add the meat, then I have done this part 2 different ways - 1. Add 1/4 C flour mixed with some salt & pepper to the meat, mix, then add 1 1/2 C beef broth; or 2. Add 3 packets brown gravy mix and use a little more water - like 2 C. Then a splort of worcestershire sauce and add the veggies, cook on low for 10-12 hours, or on high for 5-6 hours.
Following this recipe, I still thought the stew was too watery, so last time I added some cornstarch (not too much, use like 2 TBS.), but there were some other suggestions for thickening in a thread I had to start to save my batch from the cornstarch taste.
Plus, on the cooking times - I started mine at 1:00 AM and let it cook almost 14 hours on low - the meat had shredded and fallen apart, but it tasted great.
You may be able to get the same results from a Dutch oven, if you:
a) make sure it is very tightly covered (use a sheet of aluminum foil between the pot and the cover)
and
b) watch it very carefully
A crock pot is special in that it cooks at a constant low temperature, loses very very very little water (if any) and can be left unattended. And everything heats really evenly because of the ceramic crock.
So a Dutch oven you may have to add liquid to during the cooking time.
To tell you the truth, I’ve never had a slow-cooked meal in a Dutch Oven that was the same as a crockpot one, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be accomplished. If you try it, let us know how it turns out.
I love a pot roast in the crock pot. Mmmmm…tender and delicious! Make it the same way you usually do, but I like to throw 1/2 can of beer in with it. Makes for a yummy gravy.
My uncle is a real crackpot. He came up with a recipe for a renewable energy source that involved uranium and soap.
Like I said, a real crackpot. 
Ham Hocks and Blackeye Peas
Soak one pound of beans overnight. In the morning, drain them and rinse them. Add two hamhocks. Cover with water and put the cover on. Cook on the high setting until the meat starts coming off of the bones. Remove the hamhocks and remove the bones and skin. Return the meat to the crock pot. You might want to cook it an extra hour to make sure the flavours are well mixed. Variation: Use pinto beans.
Corned Beef and Cabbage
Slice the corned beef against the grain, about two or three inches wide. Add seasoning packet if it came with one. Peal two large potatoes and cut into eights (I use big potatoes). Peal a bouple of carrots and add to the pot. Cover with water, cover and cook on the high setting for about six hours or so. Half an hour before serving, quarter a head of cabbage and add to the pot.
BBQ Beef
Cut a beef roast into two- or three-inch slabs and put in the crock pot. Cover and cook on high until the liquid which will have come out of the meat is almost boiled away. The meat should shread easily with a fork at this point. Add your favourite BBQ sauce to taste and serve on buns.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who saw “crack pot” in the thread title. Guess I better put down the crack pot! Pipe! I meant pipe.
Well, the most important thing is the ingredients. I recommend home-grown vegetables, as store bought veggies are all sprayed with willpower sapping “insecticides.” Make sure you use free range chickens, too. Safeway chickens aren’t really chickens; they’re grown in vats by genetics companys.
Now, first wash all your ingredients. Use bottled water. You don’t want any of that nasty flouride depleting your vital essences. I also recommend microwaving everything for at least twenty seconds, to destroy any government-implanted listening devices in your food. Now, before I get into the recipe itself, I want everyone at home to put on their tinfoil hats. We don’t need out minds read, do we? And just to be on the safe side, I’ll be running a blender in the background, in case there are any bugs in my kitchen. You never know who’s going to be listening in, and I’ve been getting a lot of threatening letters from the KGB diguised as credit card statements.
I might have looked in the wrong place, but every chili recipe I’ve ever seen has me cooking the meat first (often multiple kinds of meat) - and then transferring it to the crock pot meaning, not only have I not saved preparation time, but I’ve got even more to clean. This is not a satisfactory situation. Is precooking all the meat a necessary evil?
Dip
Cut up a block of Velveeta cheese and put it in the pot. Add one jar of medium-hot Pace Picante Sauce. Melt the cheese with the salsa in it, stirring frequently. Keep hot on the low setting as long as the dip lasts. Serve with tortilla chips.
Careful: It’s hard to stop eating once you’ve started.
Thanks for the replies, guys!!
One arm roast. A quarter cup of red wine. Some chopped dried onion (available in the spice section of the store). Put in pot and simmer for half a day.
I like arm roasts for the crock pot because they’re fairly cheap, there’s little waste, and they’re very flavorful. For some reason, fresh onions don’t cook up nearly as well as the stuff in jars.
I’ve also had VERY nice results from just throwing pork chops in the cooker, and letting them simmer. I’m going to have to try it with a pork roast sometime soon.
If you really want a bunch of crockpot recipes, your best bet is a website dedicated to that very topic. I have visited Tasty Crockpot Recipes on and off over the past year or so. You can find pretty much whatever you might be looking for there, I would think.
It depends. Pre-cooking can accomplish three things:
-
Browning the meat changes the flavor of the finished product.
-
It allows you to drain off any rendered fat after browning, which will decrease greasiness of the finished product.
-
If the desired end result is not soup/stew, pre-cooking the meat removes quite a bit of water which could sogg-ify the recipe.
If none of those seems necessary to you, don’t bother.
For example, if you’re using very lean meat, there is usually little or no fat to drain off at the end, so I don’t usually bother.
And while browning stew beef does improve the flavor a bit, IMO, I am usually too lazy to do it, so I just throw it in without browning.
HTH