My girlfriend is getting a Crockpot from her Daddy for Christmas. It’s a larger one, 4.5 liters, and we’re pretty hyped.
So, good dopers, give unto me a decent recipe for a crockpot.
1- it should use meat of some sort.
2- it can’t have a lot of spices, since we only have the basics.
3- I’m looking for something that will take several hours, and be nice and warm since it’s been pretty freekin’ cold out here.
Suggestions gladly taken!
You won’t get many replies because we’re all reading the topic line as “Crackpot recipes”. I clicked on it out of boredom and realized it was “crockpot” only after reading the OP.
How about the good old classic poor man’s chili con queso: A 1 pound block of velveta (regular, not mexican style), a pound of cooked & crumbled ground beef or sausage, and a 16 oz. jar of Old El Paso taco sauce (mild/medium/spicy according to your preference). Let it all come together in the crock pot until the cheese has melted enough to be stirred. Use low to medium setting; high may burn the cheese. Use as dipping sauce for plain nacho chips.
4.5 liters is huge. This will probably only fill it up ¼ of the way. I don’t recommend you double the recipe unless you have a lot of people to feed. This stuff is good, but very filling.
Please, if you’re going to make chile con queso, don’t make it TexMex. Use some real green chile salsa or something instead.
Poor men don’t use fancy-schmancy ingredients. They use whatever they can find at the 7-11. Any recipe can be modified to suit, of course.
Good plain food:
Chicken or beef, cream of just-about-anything soup, rice (one cup uncooked). If you don’t care for rice, leave it out and fix noodles instead.
Generally you won’t need to add extra liquid because you’ll have juices from the meat.
You can dress it up a bit with onions, carrots, mushrooms.
Spices? Don’t really need any, but you could probably sprinkle on some chopped parsley toward the end of the cooking time.
Another crockpot favorite is smoked ham (cut in chunks), cabbage and potatoes.
I just posted a thread like this a week or two ago. Search for “crockpot” in this forum. Got some good suggestions, and better, some good websites.
Beef roast (brown it in flour first)
add frozen vegetables
a can or two of french onion soup
7-8 gluggs of red wine
water to cover
salt, pepper, garlic, basil
Beef Stew:
Chop a raw beef roast into one inch cubes, coat them in flour, put them in along the bottom of the crockpot until it’s completely covered. You can put in a second ‘layer’ if you like.
Slice one or two potatoes into cubes…red or yellow potatoes are better, but you can use the big ol’ baking kind, too. Layer them on top of the beef.
Slice one or two big yellow onions, add.
Slice one or two big carrots, layer on top of onions.
If you like garlic, you can slip some garlic in there. I like to go heavy on it. Add some salt and pepper AND/OR some meat seasoning to taste.
Add any kind of broth you like. I prefer beef broth. Just pour in enough until it -barely- reaches a short ways over the top of all the layers of ingredients. Cover it with the lid, and cook on ‘low’ for about 5-6 hours, or on ‘high’ for 2-3 hours.
The best thing about this recipe is it’s modubility. If you like rice, you can add a little rice…if you like celery, you can add a little celery. All it really takes is adjusting the broth level a bit more or less depending on what ingredients you take or leave.
Take the facility director and the two area managers from where I work and…okay I did read the OP, but can we still put these idiots in a pot and cook them?