Simple Crockpot favorites

Two recipes we like are these that Hope and Jenny gave me when I got our crockpot a year or so ago.

CROCKPOT CHICKEN CACCIATORE (from Hope)

1 lg. onion thinly sliced
3lbs. cut up chicken (Hope uses four chicken breasts, I use two or three with extra mushrooms and some julienne carrots)
2(6oz.) cans tomato paste
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tsp. salt
1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 tsp. oregano, or 1 of oregano and 1 of Italian spice blend
1 bay leaf
1/2 c. water

Place onions in bottom of crockpot. Add chicken pieces. Stir together remaining ingredients. Pour over chicken. Cook on low 7 to 9 hours: high 3 to 4 hours. Serve over spaghetti.

You can add green pepper or julienne carrots. Hope also suggested a little wine, or using canned chicken broth instead of water, or putting fresh or canned tomatoes in.

Hope says parmesan cheese is nice in it too, towards the end of the cooking time.

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CHICKEN A LA KING (from Jenny)

Cubed chicken breasts
2 cans, or one family sized one, cream of chicken soup
1/4 cup of flour
1/4 cup chopped green onions
dash of chayenne pepper
salt and pepper

Mix it all up in the crockpot and cook for 8 hours. Serve over or with rice

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I have cooked a whole chicken in mine too - potatoes and carrots on the bottom, the chicken on the top and pour two or three cups of water/stock over. I usually give it about an hour on high, then turn it down to low of medium for a few hours, until it's done. The skin won't crisp up but I don't eat that anyway, so I don't mind.

What's the Great Chicken Experiment?? :

all your usual all-in-one dishes will work (like chili) of course - you probably knew that already. You might need to add some cornflour and water to thicken since it won't boil thicker. Creamed corn works too!

I don't know how much this will help you, but I usually throw in a protein (fish or chicken could work, or even tofu chunks), a can of chopped tomatoes and suitable flavourings and another veg of some kind, sometimes potatoes. Since my lump of protein is usually pork or beef and frozen solid you probably wouldn't need to cook it for as long if you were doing chunks of tofu!

I see no point whatsoever in browning everything first. The whole point of the crockpot for me is that you minimise the work and get to make dinner at breakfast. I can't imagine myself defrosting a lump of meat overnight and browning it and some vegetables at breakfast! The only exception to that might be onions, which do take on a totally different flavour when fried rather than boiled from raw. Personally though I might consider having fried onions on the side if I was going to make such a fuss. Again, frying onions at breakfast or even lunch is more than I can handle.

Soups work too, though clear is better unless you like lots of cornflour or lots of creamed corn! You can always add small quantities of instant mashed potato flakes as a thickener too if you have them.

I've never 'roasted' anything or done anything dry in mine. I've done a Chinese rice dessert though (glutinous black and white rices), but it usually only reaches the right consistency by the third day!!!

I think if you do wet stuff it's very straightfoward, and if you like cooking with cans of soup then it's even more versatile and easy. Just remember that it will stay wetter than stovetop dishes and adjust accordingly. And common sense will go a long way - just because it says fry it first doesn't mean it. Oh, and chicken will break apart naturally after a while, so no need to cut up anything first if you leave it on long enough!

Ratatouille is a great thing to do in there too, and you can always throw a protein in it if you want, or just have it over pasta or rice.

Kerri.

I think I got this recipe off this site a few years ago. I think it was Susannah that posted it, but can't be sure. Anyway, we love it!

Lean Mean Black Beans
3-15 oz black beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 c chopped onion
1 1/2 c chopped green pepper
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp thyme
1 1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 vegetable bouillon cube
5 bay leaves
1-14 oz can stewed tomato
1 cup water

Mix all in crock pot. Cook low 6 hours, high 4 hours. Remove bay leaves. Serve over rice.

I also like to add baby portobellos to the cooking and a dollop of sour cream to the finished product.

Also, do you have a rice steamer? I couldn't live without ours. It does vegetables too. The instructons also say fish but I've never tried. I got mine for only $19.99 and it has been worth triple that to us! It's another good non stove appliance. Just an idea.

My easiest crockpot recipe:

Almost fill the crockpot with cut up potatoes (I don't peel them, but you can if you want), carrots and onion in any ratio you like. Add some chicken breast tenders. Sprinkle with lemon pepper and add about 2T butter and about 1/4 C water. Mix everything together a couple of times during the cooking time so that the seasoning gets on everything. Cook on high from lunch until dinner or on low from breakfast until dinner, depending on when you want to get it going. I like it with a lot of lemon pepper, but a couple of my kids think it's too much pepper that way. If you don't use much lemon pepper in it, you might want to add some salt to make up the flavor.

Ok, it's not a real recipe, but it's soooo easy and it tastes good.

Lauralyn

I got a really cheap roast (arm roast), and was at loss what to do....but found this off allrecipes.com..can't claim ownership...but can claim yumminess
1 cheap roast 3-4 pounds
1 envelope of onion soup mix
1/3 cup of soy sauce
water to almost cover roast....lots of pepper on part of roast sticking out.
cook low for 20, hours...yep...set it up before you go to bed and it will be yummy tender for dinner the next day.
lots of extra juice.
I pulled the meat, and added BBQ for sands, made flour taco's with meat, and did just plain with rice(from the rice cooker) and microwaved vegis! Yummy and cheap, and oh so easy

chicken - tenders, breast, legs, whatever part you like.

cream of mushroom soup
cheddar cheese soup
dry onion soup mix

mix together and cook all day on low.

serve over rice!

Also, chicken with a jar/bottle of you fav bar-b-que sauce. YUMMY!

Jana

Please? There's a whole crockpot section there.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

Asian chicken:
several chicken breasts (boneless)
1-2 Tablespoons sesame oil
1 cup orange or pineapple juice
chunks of green and/or red peppers
chunks of sweet onion
4 cloves garlic pressed over
minced fresh ginger to taste (I use 2 tablespoons)
5 Tablespoons soy sauce

Let all cook several hours on low, take out everthing from the juice, turn pot up to high and thicken juices with cornstarch cold water mix. Pull chicken meat apart, add everything back to pot and add frozen, thwed broccoli florets and sliced shitake mushrooms briefly softened in the microwave. Stir well and let simmer for 30 minutes. Serve over rice.

White Chicken Chili:
bite sized pieces of raw boneless chicken breast
2 cans white beans, drained and rinsed
1 can diced green chili
1 can sliced black olives
1 diced sweet onion
1 cup chicken broth

Cook all on low for 6 hours or so-do not stir!
Turn off heat, gently stir in 1-2 cups sour cream and 1-2 cups grated cheddar cheese cheese, cover and let sit for 20-30 minutes.
(I have also thrown frozen corn kernels and a can of drained diced tomatoes in this to extend it)

I love my crockpot.
Have fun!
-Jo

just a list of all recipes.........am I in the wrong place?

Jana

Shaun, not sure how your day's routine is at the moment, but I find that I can adapt recipes that need the onions cooking first (tomato sauce for pasta etc) by putting the onions and oil in on high for an hour, then adding in the wet and/or bulk ingredients. That only works if you're around an hour later to put in the rest, of course! Mine have been a little more brown on the edges that you might want a couple of times! This method seems to give a bit more flexibility in adapting non-traditional crock-pot dishes.

Zillah

Something that tasts better than you'd think:

One Polish sausage
Two jars saurkraut
A dozen or so whole Allspice thingies. (It's not Polish without the Allspice, I can tell you.)

Put these together the night before on low. I know there are turkey/chicken/vegetarian versions of Polish sausage out there (Polska Kielbasa for the uninitiated) if you don't want the regular pork version. If you use the alternative sausages, probably don't cook it overnight, just have it going before 10 am.

One of my MIL's best friends in Pennsylvania does this and we all went nuts over it, it was so good. Quite a few Polish immigrants settled in those parts. Coal mines, you know.
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"If you want your children to be bright, read them fairytales-- if you want them to be brilliant, read them even more fairytales" Albert Einstein

throw some porkchops in the crockpot and a bottle of BBQ sauce..thats it. cook for about 2 hours on high..

a whole chicken with tons of lemon pepper.. about 3 hours on high.