any enthusiasm for crockpot recipes in this forum...?

[mike_c]

I have to say, I've rarely used them. I have a small one that I used to cook short ribs in, and that's just about it. My partner had a big one that we used each year to make apple butter and such, but the stoneware broke so we bought a new one today. Lots of apples on the trees, LOL.

But I got interested in doing more with it and looked up a bunch of recipes with photos online. Some sounded appealing, but most looked like gray meat in over boiled, mushy glop. I mean, I looked at literally hundreds of online food photos and almost none looked very appealing. Rather than interested, I feel vaguely queasy.

I suppose it's the best thing ever for pot roast or something similar, but I cannot remember the last time I cooked a big roast. Can anyone make me more enthusiastic about crock pot recipes?

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Best posole I've had is one I make...also a slow cooker Mexican spiced pork loin.

I also have a great recipe for chicken mole that uses the crock pot.

We don't use it much...but when we do, the results are pretty stunning!

[mike_c]

3. thanks-- that's what I'm looking for, positive stories....

Most of the pics I looked at reminded me of soft meat floating in cream of mushroom paste. Seriously. I think crock pot cooks tend to accumulate a bunch of bad food pics or something.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. Want the links to those above? check below

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-posole/ - I do a few minor variations - I use chicken thighs - don't even pre-saute them - just put them in frozen, add everything...just delicious

chicken mole - http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/recipes/mike-s-mole-de-pollo.html - you do need the mole spice mix the savory spice shop sells..it is worth it!

spiced pork - http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/slow_cooker_mexican_pulled_pork/

All of these are easy and wonderful

[mike_c]

9. thanks!

I think you might have hit on one reason the pics I mentioned looked so unappealing. I'm used to browning meat, and I guess the extra step is somewhat against the main philosophical reasons for liking the one-step one-pot simplicity of crock pot meals.

[Hortensis]

26. Thank you, NRaleigh, for the posole recipe!

DH really enjoyed it as written. I learned once again that the flavor of hominy doesn't do anything for me, or at least the canned white variety that's all our local grocery stocks, but the sauce was so wonderful I could have made a dinner of just it and the flour tortillas I was mopping it up with.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Allow me to try, my dear mike_c!

I have a recipe for "Smothered Steak" that I make in my crock pot.

Take one top sirloin steak and trim the fat; slice the meat into 1" strips. Put into the bottom of the crock pot.

Over the steak, pour some sliced mushrooms (canned or fresh), a sliced onion and on top, the contents of a can of stewed tomatoes.

Do not stir.

Cover and cook on high for about one hour. Reduce the heat to low for the rest of the day, 8 hours or like that.

Serve over rice or whatever your favorite starch may be.

That's it. It smells wonderful all day, and the meat is sooo tender and flavorful!

[mike_c]

4. thanks, Peggy....

Hope all is well down south!

edit: DOWN south, LOL!

[Warpy]

6. It's the only way to cook beans at high altitude.

They just never get done if you try to do them on the stove. That long slow cooking under a heavy glass lid is what does them. I do 8-10 hours for navy beans and up to 18 for soybeans.

Mine is from a thrift shop and I think it cost me a whole two bucks.

ETA: Yeah, it also does a great job on posole, that's about a 6 hour cooking time.

[mike_c]

7. yeah, I get that, or a pressure cooker....

We live about 100 ft above sea level, if that . Just a couple of miles from the coast. Still, I'll bet the crock pot would be a great way to slow bake beans all day more reliably than trying to regulate an oven that low.

[Warpy]

8. I'm over a mile up and water boils at 200.

I had to relearn how to cook when I moved out here.

[SheilaT]

18. Oh, heck. I'm likewise

over a mile up (7,000 feet, Santa Fe) and it does take longer to cook lots of things, but you don't necessarily need a crock pot.

Don't get me wrong, I love crock pot cooking and I don't do enough of it, but I've gotten so adding the extra time is second nature to me.

If you want my opinions about baking at altitude, I'll happily share. It's not as hard as people make it out to be, and too many professional cooks who ought to know better (I'm looking at you Stacey Pearl) get it wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Which is why the breads baked at most grocery stores, even the supposedly better ones, go stale too quickly.

[Warpy]

19. I'll never forget the first time I baked bread out here

It felt like the "I Love Lucy" episode when the oven spring knocked her across the room on the end of a giant bread loaf, the stuff rose so fast.

And yes, everything that isn't sealed up tight dries out very quickly, something that comes in handy when somebody in the house leaves the chip bag open overnight.

BTW, dried out breads, rolls and other baked stuff can be rejuvenated really well by steaming. My Chinese steamers have gotten a real workout here.

[SheilaT]

21. I haven't actually tried steaming,

but just thinking about it I can tell it would work well.

Interestingly enough, I have a bread machine, and if I use that to bake bread all I do is reduce the yeast and leave all other ingredients the same.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

10. We use em for all sorts of things.

Safest way to slow cook food all day, I'd never simply leave a burner on all day, but I will happily ignore the crockpot for up to 6-8 hours at a time as the food slowly cooks.

Stuffed peppers are one of our most frequent crockpot dishes, although we do most of the prep outside first, so it's sort of cheating. The filling is mostly cooked before it ever gets into the crock pot, so the crock pot is used as a steamer (with a cup or so of water in the bottom, and the peppers sitting upright in it.) for a few hours just to soften up the outer bell pepper.

Regular meats left on all day in some liquid come out fall-apart tender. Stews in the winter, or mozza-stuffed meatballs simmering in sauce. Grab a preformed ham, score it all over, pop in teriyake sauce and crushed pineapple and let it go.

No apples on my trees this year, after having a bumper crop last year I bought a cheap food mill, which left shreds of metal in with the apple butter I was trying to make last year, so I had to pitch the batch (as well as the cheap food mill). Was given a good food mill for Christmas, but now I've got no apples. Still, I'll be trying it out to make black raspberry jelly later in the season. (Supposedly it was a crappy year for most people growing raspberries around our part of the country, thanks to the seriously harsh winter, but our canes were started from a wild varietal I found out in deep woods, not a modern cultivar, so while they're not as sweet and have a higher seed to pulp content, they're both tasty and hardy as all get out.)

[mike_c]

11. good luck with your berries!

We live in coastal northern California, where blackberries in particular are an annual bumper crop, all for the foraging. Of course, we love them along road sides and hedgerows, and work like the dickens to eradicate them from the yard, LOL. They'll turn your yard to a bramble at light speed, it seems! Friends with raspberries report the crop is average or low, but sweet this year.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. We had a bumper crop this year, in part because

of that 'turn your yard into a bramble' thing. I started the patch a decade, decade and a half back with just some berries mashed into the ground and covered up, and it's now taking up maybe a 20x16 area or so, and would be even bigger if I hadn't put up some fence posts and strung wire along one side. I couldn't even get in to half of the center of the patch this year, and I think we've still got enough to do 80-100 jars of jam, or somewhat less jelly, since removing all the seeds will debulk a bit.

[eridani]

20. OMFG!! You planted blackberries on purpose?

In the Pacific Northwest, that's practically a death wish.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

22. Heh!

Black raspberries

But the birds have been planting mulberries all over the property as well.

[Snarkoleptic]

13. I get a lot of use out of my crock pot and enjoy having dinner ready to roll on cue.

My favorite recipes are- chicken with dumplings, Guinness beef stew, shredded beef tacos and

Italian Beef Sandwiches

4# pot roast (or other cheap/available cut)
2 - 24oz jars of pepperoncini (salad peppers)
6 cloves garlic
Pinch of rosemary and black pepper
1 medium onion - quartered
French rolls
Hungry masses

Place roast in crock pot.
Add liquid from both jars of peppers. Add water so meat is 50% covered (if needed)
Remove (and discard) stems from peppers and add along with garlic cloves, onion, pepper and rosemary.
Cook 8-10 hours on low (5-6 hours on high).

Roughly shred with serving fork.
Serve on Italian rolls (giardinera pepper mix is a great topping).

Rather salty but quite tasty and filling.
This is a great "set it and forget it" when you're entertaining or want a hearty sandwich on hand after being out all day.

[msanthrope]

14. America's Test Kitchen has a slow cooker cookbook--it is excellent--

http://www.amazon.com/Cooker-Revolution-Editors-Americas-Kitchen/dp/1933615699

[fizzgig]

15. i just finished bbq pork loin roast from the crock pot

2.5 pound roast, about a cup and a half of bbq sauce and a roughly chopped onion. let it go on low for five or six hours and enjoy. you can do a bit less sauce and dump in a can of drained pineapple. i like doing that with pork chops, too.

i want to do pork green chili, too.

[libodem]

16. Toco Soup

Off the top of my head:
Brown 2 lbs of ground beef
2 soup can size tomato sauce
1 chopped white onion
I package Toco seasoning
1 package ranch dressing
2 soup can size diced tomatoes with chilies
canned or frozen shoe peg corn
One bunch cilantro
A jalapeño or two

cook 6 hours or more

Top with cheese and sour cream

I think that's it look it up for sure. It's different than chili. Good with tortilla chips.

There is a white bean chicken chili that is to die for too.

[TreasonousBastard]

17. I'm living alone now so don't use it as much, but...

when I have to show up somewhere with stews, chili and such, the crockpot is fantastic. Slow cooking tenderizes meat and merges all those flavors in there.

I have also successfully done roasts, meatloaf and a few other things in it and note that in the summer it doesn't heat up the place.

[spinbaby]

23. Pot roast

Even with just the two of us, we make pot roast regularly because it becomes three meals. First meal is the roast. Second meal is beef fried up with peppers and onions served up in rolls with or without cheese melted on top. Third meal is anything left over, including the "juice," made into vegetable soup.

[hobbit709]

24. I do a whole chicken in mine.

Fill up the cavity with about 2 bulbs worth of garlic cloves and put in crockpot. Don't add anything else. The meat falls off the bones when you try to lift it out and the cloves spread nicely on a piece of toast.

I also do a leg of lamb and split pea soup with ham in it.

[Bibliovore]

25. A couple of my favorites

Wow, great recipes. I'm glad you asked this question!

Here are a couple we particularly enjoy:


1) Easiest dinner ever, and very yummy: Crock pot salsa chicken.

* Dump as much chicken as you like in the crock pot -- can be fresh, still-frozen, light, dark, with or without bones.
* Pour in your favorite salsa -- mild, sweet, beans & corn, habanero, whatever -- roughly 6 oz per pound of chicken (adjust as desired).
* Cover and slow-cook on low for ~6-9 hours, until it's incredibly tender or you get home from your day.

The first time you make it, use more salsa than you think you'll need or plan for the short-end cooking time, in case your cooker goes through liquid faster than mine. And extra salsa makes for good sauce.

Serve as-is, over rice or pasta if you like, or shred it for tacos, burritos, salads, etc.


2) One of my partner's absolute favorites, with more prep time but absolutely worth it, is this copycat (but better) Chipotle barbacoa recipe -- we cook it overnight (from bedtime through next-day dinner) on low, and it's amazing:
http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/2010/01/21/chipotle-mexican-grills-barbacoa-beef-recipe-wannabe-is-a-winner/

Great for a taco/burrito bar, especially with Chipotle-copycat cilantro lime rice:
http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php/index.php?id=rice_recipe
and black beans (we add a bay leaf, removed before serving):
http://savingslifestyle.com/2012/03/copycat-recipe-chipotles-vegetarian-black-beans/


If you have leftovers of either (we make extra to make sure we do), you can use it to fill burritos, then freeze them individually for easy, delicious lunches or don't-have-time-to-cook nights.

[sir pball]

27. Just going to say, a low oven/pilot light and a good enameled cast iron pot are > any slow cooker.

Crockpots are a relatively new invention but the technique isn't; you'd be well to look at some old recipes for delicious things like braised lamb shanks, cassoulet, veal breast, pot-au-feu, and any of the other infinite dishes that have sprung from the need to make cheap, tough meat and veg tender and delicious with a minimum of firewood. The upside of a crockpot is the "set it and forget it", but I love my off-brand Chinese "Le Creuset" that I inherited from grandma because I can sear my meat, deglaze, brown my veg and build my roux if needed, and then braise, all in the same pot. It's a bit more skillful than a standalone machine but it's also far more flexible.