Slow Cooker/Crock Pot: Recipes and Techniques

[Tri2Cook]

Apple Butter...

[Darienne]

Never thought of making apple butter in a crock-pot. Great idea, Tri2Cook. Alas, we had no apples this year after last year's bumper crop.

We did have wild grapes up the wazoo. I could pick some more...

[Tri2Cook]

Never thought of making apple butter in a crock-pot. Great idea, Tri2Cook. Alas, we had no apples this year after last year's bumper crop.

We did have wild grapes up the wazoo. I could pick some more...

I've never done it that way either. I needed apple butter for the dish I came up with for the latest installment of TGRWT from khymos.org and that seemed like the best solution for getting it done during the work-week so I could be in before the deadline. It worked great.

[Alex]

Great timing! Ms. Alex is, at this very moment, making a lentils + spinach recipe out of The Indian Slow Cooker.

[Darienne]

Never thought of making apple butter in a crock-pot. Great idea, Tri2Cook. Alas, we had no apples this year after last year's bumper crop.

We did have wild grapes up the wazoo. I could pick some more...

I've never done it that way either. I needed apple butter for the dish I came up with for the latest installment of TGRWT from khymos.org and that seemed like the best solution for getting it done during the work-week so I could be in before the deadline. It worked great.

Never a day without learning. Looked up Khymos.org and TGRWT. Not my thing, but interesting. I'm still learning how to boil water I fear.

[AmyKay]

I love my crockpot(s)! Alex, your post has reminded me that I want to find a good source of Indian Crockpot recipes. Every time we get food of that genre I always leave with the intention of finding some good recipes so I can make it at home.

I think that I have just found my answer to dividend's question. This Fall, I hope to be cooking some yummy Indian food in my crockpot!

[Kim Shook]

I always do my stocks (after roasting bones and veg) in the slow cooker and I just last week did fabulous polenta in the slow cooker for the first time ever. It never occured to me that you COULD do polenta in one. I'm gonna try grits next!

[dividend]

Oooh, that Indian cookbook looks promising.

I have, in the past, done crockpot apple butter and then canned it. It was great, but now everyone wants more of it!

Ok, I looked at my freezer inventory and there's some things in there that seem like promising crock pot candidates (these are what's left of trying to eat through my meat share from a local farm - I took a break from it because my freezer was getting full and have been trying to eat what's in there):

A 3 lb bone-in leg of lamb

A 4 lb whole chicken

A 4 lb ham

6 big hunks of grass fed beef - 2 2.5 lb beef arm roasts, 2 3-4 lb beef chuck roasts, a 1.5 lb pikes peak roast, and a 3.5 lb sirloin tip roast

Random google searches yeild crock pot recipes for any/all of these, but I trust eG's recommendations more. Like I said, I've only done hunks of pork/beef so far, so recommendations and tips for the chicken/ham/lamb leg would be awesome.

[gfweb]

We have been fooling with crockpot recipes for our college kids to make at school. W-S had this recipe for lasagna http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/slow-cooker-lasagna.html?cm_src=RECIPESEARCH which turned out to be more than adequate after tweaking the spices etc. Who'd a thunk.

[MelissaH]

We love that Indian slow cooker cookbook. The saag paneer recipe is a winner; the only tough part was getting all the spinach to fit into the cooker. I finally wound up wilting most of it on the stovetop, at which point the rest of the recipe was—er—cake.

The author also has an Indian vegan slow cooker cookbook out now. We don't have that one, but I have taken a quick peek through it, and think that if you don't have an issue with dairy and do have a source of paneer, you could pretty readily swap out the tofu in many of the recipes for a different take.

Deborah Schneider has a Mexican slow cooker cookbook that doesn't look wimpy. My chief complaint about so many of the slow cooker cookbooks is that they're "dumbed down", especially with respect to spicy foods and overtly ethnic ingredients.

MelissaH

[Jaymes]

Katie, do try looking at A Year of SlowCooking

here

Scroll down nearly to the bottom of the page and check out the Best Brussels Sprouts ever.

I made the recipe and they are wonderful. I do like the little cabbages, but these are better than any I have prepared in the past and I have been handling them for many years.

Reading back over this thread, I realized that I had never thanked you for that link to "Year of Slow Cooking." I have now made three recipes from the site, and find it a very valuable resource. Thanks so much for taking the time to direct me there!

[Tri2Cook]

Never a day without learning. Looked up Khymos.org and TGRWT. Not my thing, but interesting. I'm still learning how to boil water I fear.

This is what I did with my crock pot apple butter for TGRWT (the theme was raisins)...

tempura bacon - pickled raisins with garlic and jalapeno - toasted walnuts tossed with toasted walnut oil and smoked salt - apple butter - fresh thyme - cracked black pepper

[kate]

Beef stroganoff is what I use the crock pot for usually. I can start with the crock on the stovetop, so I can brown everything first. Huge improvement over my first hand-me-down crockpot the lacked that capability!

I also love to put in a package of chicken thighs, can of coconut milk, cup or so of chicken stock, and a couple heaping tablespoons of Thai red curry paste (Mae Ploy is what I have now, but prefer the small tins - brand name escapes me). Throw in a head of cauliflower towards the end while rice steams, then serve with chopped cilantro and slices of lime. One of my favorite meals, but too spicy for some, which I learned when I served it to my parents, who could only eat the rice. Oops!

[heidih]

That Thai style chicken thigh dish sounds like a winner kate. I do not use mine often but a couple of years ago I did veal shanks for my dad's birthday in the crock. My kitchen was not useable so no browning possible. Yes there was a lack of flavor because of that but the overall taste and texture were great. He still tells his wife that only I am allowed to make the dish for him.

[AlenChris]

Never a day without learning. Looked up Khymos.org and TGRWT. Not my thing, but interesting. I'm still learning how to boil water I fear.

This is what I did with my crock pot apple butter for TGRWT (the theme was raisins)...

tempura bacon - pickled raisins with garlic and jalapeno - toasted walnuts tossed with toasted walnut oil and smoked salt - apple butter - fresh thyme - cracked black pepper

Looks delicious. What was it's taste like?

[Darienne]

Beef stroganoff is what I use the crock pot for usually. I can start with the crock on the stovetop, so I can brown everything first. Huge improvement over my first hand-me-down crockpot the lacked that capability!

I also love to put in a package of chicken thighs, can of coconut milk, cup or so of chicken stock, and a couple heaping tablespoons of Thai red curry paste (Mae Ploy is what I have now, but prefer the small tins - brand name escapes me). Throw in a head of cauliflower towards the end while rice steams, then serve with chopped cilantro and slices of lime. One of my favorite meals, but too spicy for some, which I learned when I served it to my parents, who could only eat the rice. Oops!

I'm going to try that Thai recipe soon. It sounds like a winner for sure. Thanks, kate.

[Lora]

In addition to big chunks o' meat, I "bake" potatoes and sweet potatoes and cook meatloaf in my crockpot. It's mostly for the convenience of walking away from it, or for when it's too hot to turn on the oven.

[Allura]

I just made a meal in the crockpot the other night: onion & red bell pepper and garlic in the bottom, then crumbled Italian sausage (we used hot), then chicken breasts. Some oregano, rosemary, and white wine. It was pretty good, but don't cook it too long. The recipe said 5-7 hours, and we pushed it a bit so the chicken was a bit dry. You want to use thicker breasts, I think. We had it over spaghetti, and threw some broccoli in there, too. Pretty good and easy because there's no browning required, so it's a "dump soup" kind of recipe (from www.savingdinner.com , which is generally my sanity savor, except when she goes bonkers with the low fat nonsense).

[Paul Bacino]

Turkey Bolognese..as I type

[Paul Bacino]

AS in here:

Turkey Bolognese

[Jaymes]

I seem to remember Alton Brown doing oatmeal in a crock pot on an episode of Good Eats. Just prepare it at night and the oatmeal's all set in the morning.

This would be particularly useful with those oatmeals which are coarse ground rather than mashed into flakes and which normally require overnight soaking and then slow cooking. The flavors in these oatmeals are way beyond the blandness of ordinary porridge oats.

Edit: Here's a curious bit of information I picked up at the Oxford [Food] Symposium this weekend. Oats, unlike other grains, inhibit the absorption of dietary fat. At least one paper on the Scottish diet has suggested that the quantum leap in Scottish ill health related to massive fried food consumption has been caused by the fact that the Scots no longer start their day with porridge!

I thought I remembered reading this somewhere, and have been looking for it. Excellent info.

A current standard in our house whenever we have overnight guests is to get the Irish Steel-cut Oats going in the crockpot the night before so that we have a nice creamy breakfast all ready the next morning.