More Lentil Soup!

3 carrots, chopped
a couple potatoes, chopped (whatever you have around)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
8 cups water or vegetable broth
2 cups lentils, rinsed (I used red and brown)

Throw it all in the crock pot. Cook on low for about 8 - 10 hours or on high for 6 hours.

About 10 minutes before serving put in 1.5 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with feta cheese on top.

Chop Suey - American Style!

I got this recipe from the blog, A Year of Slow Cooking. This woman cooked in her crock pot every day . . . for a year! And that's, you know, TOTALLY AWESOME. I altered her recipe slightly (left out the bacon and used ground turkey instead of beef). This recipe was not only delicious, but it was the perfect comfort meal for mid-winter. It's also wicked kid friendly!

1 pound lean ground turkey, browned and drained

1 large onion, diced

1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 can water (empty tomato can)

6 garlic cloves, chopped

1 jar prepared pasta sauce (I used Classico Marinar with Plum Tomatoes)

1 (16-ounce) package pasta of your choice (I used gluten free brown rice rotini pasta)

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional)

Directions:

1. In a large skillet, brown turkey the and onion all together until the meat is no longer pink. Drain well and put in crock pot.

2. Add everything else into the pot except for the pasta and cheese.

3. Stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, or high for about 4* hours. Stir in the raw pasta and cook on high for approximately 20 - 30 minutes, or until pasta is bite-tender.

*Mine was totally done, complete with pasta, in 4 hours

Bow Down Before Me For I Have Made Pulled Pork Sandwiches!!

All I can say is this was pretty easy and it was damn good! Demetri ate 3 sandwiches and Zoey ate 1.5!!!!! Plus, it uses the CROCK POT!!!!!

Ingredients

1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 (4 pound) pork shoulder roast
1 cup BBQ sauce
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon prepared yellow mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 extra large onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
8 hamburger buns, split
2 tablespoons butter, or as needed


1. Pour the vegetable oil into the bottom of crock pot. Place the pork roast into pot; pour in the BBQ* sauce, apple cider vinegar, and chicken broth. Stir in the brown sugar, yellow mustard, Worcestershire sauce, chili powder, onion, garlic. Cover and cook on High until the roast shreds easily with a fork, about 6 hours.
2. Remove the roast from the crock pot, and shred the meat using two forks. **
3. Spread the inside of both halves of hamburger buns with butter. Toast the buns, butter side down, in a skillet over medium heat until golden brown. Spoon pork into the toasted buns. Add BBQ sauce* to taste.

* I put Kraft honey BBQ sauce in the crock pot but then topped the sandwiches with KC Masterpiece - Original. The guy at the meat counter suggested I do this to sweeten the meat.
** The original recipe suggests putting the pulled port back into the juices in the crock pot. We did this with some of the meat and found that the juices were too oily and also made the buns soggy. And no one wants to eat wet bread (Hi Corey!!!)

Chicken Stroganoff in a Crock Pot!

I love my crock pot!!!! And this recipe is soooo easy. And soooo yummy. Plus, there was enough left over to freeze for another meal.

3 - 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts - cubed

1/8 cup margarine or butter

1 (.7 ounce) package dry Italian salad dressing mix

• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 
  
• 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
• 
  

1. Put chicken, margarine and dressing mix in crock pot; mix together and cook on low for 5 to 6 hours.
2. Add cream cheese and soup, mix together and cook on high for another 1/2 hour or until hot.
3. Serve over rice or egg noodles.

Beef Stroganoff: the cheater's version

I love me some beef stroganoff, but every recipe I have ever seen (except this one, which was adapted from one I found in the "Fix-It and Forget-It 5 Ingredient Favorites" book I've mentioned before) involves browning the beef in a skillet, making a huge mess on my stove top. I am the kind of clean freak who is not actually a fan of cleaning-- a lot of times, I'd rather not do an activity than do it and clean up after it. Honestly, this is one of my biggest problems with cooking-- the clean up involved. Hence, my love for crock pot meals that involve no pre-cooking.

When I made this recipe a few weeks ago, we happened to have some Parmesan cheese in the fridge, so we sprinkled it on top. Mmmmmm! It went very well with steamed green beans, too. For some reason, the sauce looks really pale in this picture-- I think it was because of the flash, because I don't remember it being this pale.


Ingredients:
10 3/4 oz can cream of mushroom soup (the condensed kind)
14 1/2 oz can beef broth
1 lb beef stewing meat (buy the kind already cubed in 1" pieces)
1 cup sliced mushrooms (buy the kind already sliced)
1 1/4 cup sour cream
2 cups egg noodles

1) Stir together the cream of mushroom soup and beef broth in the crock pot.

2) Add meat and mushrooms.

3) Cover and cook on High for 3-4 hours; reduce heat and cook on Low for 3-4 hours. (If you're not going to be home and won't be able to change the temperature, cook it on High for 5-6 hours, but the beef will be a bit tougher when you do that.)

4) At some point during the day, cook the egg noodles.

5) Right before you're ready to eat, stir in the sour cream (you can whisk it to make it combine with the broth more quickly), and then stir in the noodles.

*****

Seriously-- could this get any easier? I love this recipe so much!

German Potato Soup

I'm sitting here typing this as the fantastic smell of German Potato Soup is wafting down the stairs and making me wish is was dinner time right NOW! I am not posting a picture of it because it's not very attractive (most soups aren't). But believe me, it's AWESOME. If you leave out the bacon and use vegetable broth rather than beef broth, it is Kosher-friendly and vegetarian. The caraway seeds, nutmeg, and sour cream are the key ingredients. Mmmmmm....

Even though this recipe seems idiot-proof, I still managed to mess it up the first time I made it. It wasn't 100% my fault, though! I found the original recipe in "Best-Loved Slow Cooker Recipes", and my first attempt at cooking this soup uncovered a glaring typo in the book-- it called for 2 teaspoons of black pepper. Being the dutiful and very inexperienced non-chef that I am, I followed that recipe to a T, and we ended up with a soup that made my lips and tongue burn for hours afterward. Looking at the typical proportions of pepper to salt in other soup recipes, I figured out that the author most likely meant to type "1/2" rather than "2". The other goof I did was that I didn't know you're supposed to use the white part of the leek-- not the green part. We actually googled leeks and made sure that it wouldn't kill us to eat the green part. Luckily, the pepper problem WAY overshadowed the leek problem, and the soup still tasted good enough for us to want to make it again.

There seems to be a lot of chopping involved when you first read the recipe, but it goes really quickly (it takes maybe 20 minutes). I do all of the chopping while I cook the bacon; even though you don't add the bacon until right before you serve the soup, I like to get all of the cooking done at the same time.

So, here is the recipe that I adapted from the original printed recipe:

1 pound potatoes, diced (I leave the skins on)
4 cups beef broth
1 small onion, chopped
1 leek (the white part!!), trimmed and diced
2 carrots, diced
1 1/2 cups chopped cabbage
1/4 cup chopped parsley (or 2 tsp dried parsley)
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
a little less than 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup sour cream
1 pound bacon, cooked until very crispy and diced

Optional ingredient: celery (I think everything is better with celery.)

Combine all ingredients except the sour cream and bacon in crock pot. Cover and cook on Low for 8 to 10 hours or High for 4 to 5 hours. Remove and discard bay leaf. Stir in bacon pieces and sour cream. Serve and prepare to LOVE IT. Makes 4 servings (and any leftovers are fabulous for days afterwards).

Whole Dinner Roast Beef

I love when the main dish contains enough food groups that you don't need to add a side.... This crockpot meal is so easy, but it has some of the same problems that the roast beef with tomatoes and garlic has: sometimes there are too many leftovers and unless you want it to taste like I imagine soylent green would, you have to splurge on expensive meat. But this recipe is still really tasty and extremely easy, so in my repertoire it goes! It was adapted from a book called "Fix-It and Forget-It 5 Ingredient Favorites". You can add or subtract vegetables as desired-- the recipe is really flexible!

Ingredients:

3-4 lb roast beef (rib roast is a good choice)
10 3/4 oz can cream of mushroom soup
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
4 cups baby carrots
2 potatoes (cut into quarters)
1 cup sliced celery
1 small onion (cut into quarters)

1) Place veggies in crockpot.

2) Put meat on top of veggies.

3) Dump mushroom soup and dry onion soup mix on meat.

4) Cover and cook for 8 hours on LOW.

*****

When we made this recipe and I took this picture, I didn't add the celery or onions.



I also just realized that you can see the baby monitor in the upper right-hand corner of this picture. Ha! Andrew and I aren't able to eat dinner while Sonia is awake because he gets home from work only 15 minutes before she goes to bed. Maybe once she gets older, we can push back her bedtime so we can eat as a family, but for now, it's kinda easier (and more relaxing!!) to do it this way.

Chicken Delicious

Andrew and I found this awesome cheesily-named recipe in a pretty decent crock pot cookbook that I'm pretty sure Andrew's mom bought us at Sam's Club. I could have made that part up, though. FYI, I refuse to call it a slow cooker, even though crock pot is technically a brand name. We have made a few modifications to the recipe, and now it RULES. No pre-cooking of the meat (you know how I feel about that), no other bowls/pots/pans needed, and the potential to have an almost-full bottle of wine left over afterward to drink with dinner. This recipe will make enough for two hungry adults, and it would be really easy to double (or triple if you have a big crock pot) the recipe for a larger group.

Ingredients:

2 cans (10 1/2 oz) cream of mushroom soup

1/3 cup dry white wine (buy a bottle you like, 'cause you'll have a lot left over)
2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts (unfrozen!)

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp celery salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp paprika
Grated parmesan cheese (fresh is awesome, but dried will work okay)
Hot cooked rice

Pour the cream of mushroom soup and wine into the crock pot and stir until they are combined. Place the chicken breasts on top of the mixture and pour the lemon juice over them. Sprinkle the salts, pepper, and paprika over the chicken. Spoon the soup/wine mixture over the top of the chicken breasts so that they are well covered. Sprinkle as much grated parmesan cheese over the chicken as you want. Cover the crock pot and cook for either 4-5 hours on High or 8-10 hours on Low. Even though the chicken is being cooked in a crock pot, it can still get dried out, so I would recommend staying on the low end of the cooking times. Here's what it looks like when it's done cooking (crock pot meals never look as good as they taste!):

This time when I made it, I put a ton (probably way too much, if there is such a thing) of parmesan cheese on top, so the grease you see floating in the sauce isn't going to be there every time you make this recipe, I promise!

We serve the chicken with brown rice (the Uncle Ben's Ready Rice, of course) and spoon generous amounts of the sauce onto our plates. If you wanted to, you could use bread to sop up the sauce. It's so good!!!


So, there you have it. Only one dish dirtied (woo hoo!), and it takes just about 15 minutes at the most to dump all of the ingredients in (that's mostly from having to measure stuff). The picture above of the meal in the crock pot may make it look like the crock pot needs to be soaked and scrubbed to get off all of the crusties, but I assure you, it doesn't (unless you leave it sitting in the sink overnight before cleaning it, and even then, you could just fill it with water to avoid this problem). There's something about the way crock pot meals are cooked with all the steam and whatnot that make for fairly easy cleanup. But if you're worried about it, just let the crock pot soak while you're eating!