"Just letting you know that I just bought a slow cooker and plopped some meat, carrots, parsnips and onions into into it, and the whole apartment smells great -- such a cozy thing for a rainy fall day.
Seemed like something you would appreciate. This slow cooker thing is amazing!" Ilise
fun! congratulations! :)
i bought one of these last winter for the sole purpose of making steel-cut oats overnight, but now that it's cool again, i'd like to expand my repertoire. coming home to a home-cooked dinner that doesn't require any effort from me sounds extra-enticing these days.
does anybody have any recipes specific to the slow cooker that they would like to share? most people say "oh, you can use any soup/stew recipe in a slow cooker- just adapt it!"...but i don't know how!
i'd love to make some hearty bean soups...and find ways to use less expensive cuts of beef that might benefit from hours of tenderizing.
oh! and i thought a 40-clove garlic chicken dish might like some super-slow long cooking. the organic free-range chicken breasts that i buy are so expensive, but something cheaper like legs might be better-suited to the slow-cooker anyway, right?
so...any recipes that anyone would care to share?
thanks much!
rachel, one that is truly easy to do is making a stewed chicken dish/stew. i don't have an exact recipe but here is what i use:
-Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes, with Italian seasoning (2-3 cans, depending on the size of your cooker)
-Chicken breasts, with bones and skin (make sure you wash it well--the bones and skin provide an amazing flavor which is why I prefer them over boneless/skinless, sometimes you can find skinless breasts with bones still in)
-Seasoning: salt, pepper, garlic, Italian seasoning, any fresh herbs
-carrots, potatoes, white onions
That's it, put it all in and let it stew. Sometimes I like this with rice or egg noodles or on its own with a great baguette and some cheese and wine. It makes a great Sunday dinner because you can start it in the morning and have an amazing meal that night. My Mom makes the best beef stew, if I can get that recipe I will forward it to you. (it's the best I've ever had, but I have never been able to get it quite right!)
another great resource for quick recipes is the napa style website at www.napastyle.com.
Get a whole chicken. 1 head of garlic, 1 lemon, 1 cup chicken stock, 1 large onion (color of choice, but not red), a couple of stalks of celery (potatoes are optional if there is room. red taters work best). Put the celery flat on the bottom of the cooker dish. Remove skins from onion and garlic. Zest the lemon a bit. Halve the lemon. Quarter the onion. Stick all the garlic and lemon into the cavity of the chicken. If there is room, maybe a quarter or half of the onion can go in as well. Salt and pepper the chicken's exterior well. Place it in the dish and pour in the chicken stock. Throw in the zest. Turn the cooker on low and let it go overnight or 8 - 10 hours.
When it is all said and done, the meat should be falling off the bone. Enjoy!
Save the left over juice & bits, bones and whatnot. Roast the bones for an hour or two and with the other stuff plus fresh carrots, celery, bay leafs (generous dose) more garlic, salt & pepper you can make excellent stock for future soups. It is a long and involved process, but totally worth it. A good stock pot helps. Proportions vary.
The recipe I followed (the one that inpsired my email to AT) calls for chuck roast, salt, pepper, paprika, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, and beef broth. Trim the meat of excess fat and rub it with a mixture of the spices. Cut vegetables/potatoes into nice big pieces. Put the carrots, parsnips, and onions into the cooker, and then layer the potatoes on top of them. Then place the meat in the cooker so that it is resting on top of the potatoes. Pour in one cup of beef broth. Cook on low for 8 to 9 hours.
5-minutes-of-work-pseudo-Chinese-pork: Throw in a 2 pound pork roast with three tablespoons of honey and three tablespoons (or more) of fresh grated ginger. Cook for about 5-6 hours on high then shred the now super-tender meat with forks. Add a quarter cup or more of hoisin sauce and warm on low until you're ready to eat.
A friend made this for me recently and served as wrap-ups with whole wheat pita bread and shredded cabbage dressed with rice vinegar. Super yummy.
I made it again myself this week and substituted mashed green onions and garlic for the ginger, since I was cooking for a friend who doesn't like ginger. Very good.
Can you even use a slow cooker if you don't eat much meat? (I mean aside from soup?) I eat seafood, but that doesn't seem ideally suited to a slow cooker.
It is slow-cooker MANIA in the stores and catalogs, with every retailer offering a version. Best deals are online, and look for one with electronic thermostat controls, a removable/washable pot, and one that shifts into "keep warm mode" when cooking is done.
Pretty sure Williams Sonoma has a great new cookbook out on the subject.
Fiona-
Also pretty sure slowcookers do a bang-up job on things like rissotto, if meat is not regularly on the menu.
patrick you are so good! thanks for the advice and tip on that book, i just found it and it looks great:
http://ww1.williams-sonoma.com/cat/pip.cfm?skus=6091284&pkey=xsrd0m1%7C15%7C0%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7Cslow%20cooker&gids=sku6091284&cmsrc=sch
i want the dish on the front cover with a glass of meritage tonight.
I would imagine that it is possible with fish. You would have to get a whole fish and scale it save for the head. Again, the bones are key. I don't know about roasting them, though. I've never tried. A weekend experiment, perhaps.
Another good book is called Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook, by Beth Hensperger. I think there are tons of non-meat recipes in it.