Category: Slow Cooker

Food · Slow Cooker

Slow Cooker Sesame Beef and Brocolli

JayneLeave a comment

Okay, so you may have noticed that my 7-day slow cooker challenge didn’t exactly go to plan, in that I only managed to last for four days and my last three planned meals never quite made it onto my site. I think this happened for a couple of reasons – slow cooking, for me, is something I do to make my life more convenient, and forcing myself to use my slow cooker to a schedule just didn’t work. Also, one of the meals I planned was lasagne, and I’m not going to lie, I was really apprehensive about it. We LOVE lasagne in this house, but I always bake it the normal way, and attempting to slow cook it seemed a bit like fixing something which isn’t broken.

Anyway, I had a little slow cooker break after failing but I’m back to using it again today and it’s a super simple, super tasty beef and broccoli recipe that I’m making today:slow cooker beef and broccoli

Slow Cooker Sesame Beef and Brocolli

Slow Cooker Sesame Beef and Broccoli
Recipe Type: Slow Cooker
Cuisine: Asian
Author: Jayne Crammond
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
A slow cooked beef recipe with a simple Asian-inspired sauce.
Ingredients
  • 240ml/1 cup beef stock
  • 120ml/ 1/2 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup erythritol (substitute with brown sugar if you don’t need a low sugar recipe)
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 Tbsp sesame oil
  • 900g/2lb stewing beef
  • 1 head of broccoli
  • 4 Tbsp corn starch
  • 4 Tbsp water
  • Sesame seeds
Instructions
  1. Place the stock, soy sauce, erytritol/brown sugar, chopped garlic and sesame oil into the slow cooker pot and mix well
  2. Add the beef into the pot and mix well to coat
  3. Cook on LOW for 4 hours
  4. After 4 hours, mix the corn starch and water together and add to the pot, stirring well to thicken
  5. Add the chopped broccoli and stir
  6. Cook for a further 30 minutes on HIGH, or until broccoli is soft
  7. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve with rice or noodles, or a side of your choice.

This was such a simple recipe but has turned out to be a real crowd-pleaser with the family. It’s exactly the kind of ‘chuck it all in’ recipe which makes me love slow cooking, and offered so much flavour for such an easy-to-make dish. The sauce was salty and savoury, and thickened to almost a gravy consistency once the cornstarch was added, and cooking the broccoli in the sauce added an amazing layer of flavour. The best part of this meal is that, when you factor in a portion of rice, it came in at just 453 calories per portion, which is amazingly low!

Beef is probably my favourite meat for slow cooking as you can buy the really cheap cuts but end up with a tender, flavourful dish which is low calorie, high protein and doesn’t cost the earth – basically the Holy Grail of cooking for a family! Let me know if you make this yourself, I’d love to know if you were as pleased with the results as we were.

Slow Cooker

Busy Summer Vacation? Get Help With Slow Cooker Summer Recipes

Jayne4 Comments
Kids are out of school, and that surely means it’s a time for you to take a break of nine months of being a taxi driver for extracurricular activities or a school volunteer, right? Of course not. When summer break hits, you’re marching to a different rhythm—driving kids to and from summer camps, going on more daylong trips, or just scrambling to organize summer activity ideas to hold off kids from saying, “I’m bored!”
Basically, your kids may be getting a break from the summer, but your job has shifted to activities director—you are most likely just as busy as during the school year.
Good thing your slow cooker also doesn’t take a break either. This trusty appliance was most likely was your saving grace during the school year, cooking your family meal while you are gone all day and having it ready when you arrived home after work and picking up children. In the fall and winter months, a warm and hearty meal from the crock pot sure hit the spot after enduring brisk weather. Crockpots are great for cooking and keeping food warm on those winter days, but what about summer when a hot day calls for a cool drink or a crisp salad? Your slow cooker can cook up meals that are sure to hit the spot on summer months without you being stuck in the kitchen. Check out these crockpot tips to make summer cooking a little easier:
Barbeque
Summertime is all about cooking on the grill, but if you’re gone most of the day, firing up the grill for a quick meal may not always fit in your evening schedule. Luckily, there are many crockpot recipes that offer that summer barbeque taste without needing a grill. Many of these barbeque-like recipes simply involve marinating the meat in a sauce like mayonnaise, barbeque, or salad dressings.
For example, consider a recipe like Crock Pot Caesar Chicken: simply place four boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the crockpot, and set the crockpot on either high for three hours or low for six hours. After cooking the chicken for either three or six hours in the crockpot, drain the juices from the crockpot, keeping the chicken inside. Pour a bottle of Caesar salad dressing like Just Caesar from hampton creek on top of the chicken. Cover the crockpot and set it on high for 30 minutes. Top off with parmesan cheese and cut it up to serve with a salad or as a chicken salad.
The difference in Hampton Creek salad dressings and sauces is that they are made with minimal artificial additives and free of gluten, dairy, and soy. The company has other sauces like Just Mayo, an eggless mayonnaise, that you can use in other crockpot recipes that call for mayonnaise. Try replacing any crockpot recipe with a sauce or salad dressing from Hampton Creek.
Vegetables
Summer BBQ isn’t complete without a side of vegetables, especially corn on the cob. Corn is often boiled in a pot or cooked on the grill, but you can prepare corn on the cob ahead of time in a slow cooker so you have it ready when you get home.  One version of crockpot corn requires that you prep each ear of corn with garlic butter, pepper, salt, and wrap each ear with a slice of bacon. Place the ears of corn in a crockpot with chicken broth and minced jalapeno pepper. Cook on low for up to four hours.
Soup
Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean that you can’t eat soup. Soups are often thought of as hearty meals meant to warm you up after a cold day, but there are just as many soups that are light and flavorful, making it a perfect dish to enjoy on a hot summer day. It’s also a fun way to incorporate fresh vegetables from farmer’s markets, which most of the time are held during the warm months. A summer vegetable soup like a summer vegetable pesto soup makes use of summer vegetables like sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes, and more, and tops it off with pesto. You can also add other vegetables like white beans for a different flavor.
Summer break from school doesn’t mean that parents also get a break, but summer crockpot recipes give you a break from the kitchen so you can spend your summer days doing what you want—going to the pool, attending the county fair, relaxing at the beach—without the worry of what you’re going to eat for dinner.
Cooking and Recipes · Food · Slow Cooker

Slow Cooker Challenge – Pulled Beef Chilli

JayneLeave a comment

Pulled Beef ChilliChilli is one of those dishes which is a bit of an issue in our house. My mother-in-law is from one of the Southern states in America and therefore makes literally the best chilli I’ve ever tasted. She’s shared her recipe with me, but it NEVER tastes as good as when she makes it, so I rarely bother any more as mine is just a pale imitation! However, I’ve been desperate for some sort of chilli dish, which is where this version came from. “Pulled” dishes are a huge hit here, with pulled pork being one of our faves, and it seems to make meat go really far, so a pulled beef chilli seemed like a perfect thing for my experiments this week. Here’s how I made it:

Pulled Beef Chilli

Slow Cooker Challenge – Pulled Beef Chilli
Recipe Type: Slow Cooker
Cuisine: TexMex
Author: Jayne Crammond
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 12 portions
A smoky chilli made with brisket, which is slow cooked before being pulled.
Ingredients
  • 1.4kg beef brisket (about 3lb)
  • 2 400g cans of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 400g carton of passata
  • 4-5 slices of pickled jalapenos, chopped
  • 2tbsp chipotle chilli paste
  • 2 chopped onions
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 500ml beef stock (about a pint)
  • 1 400g can of kidney beans (drained)
  • 2 Tbsp chilli powder
  • 8 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp coriander (powdered)
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • Salt and pepper to season
  • Splash of olive oil
Instructions
  1. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and brown the brisket on all sides.
  2. Place the brisket into the slow cooker
  3. Cook the pepper, onion and garlic in the same pan until the onions just start to brown
  4. One everything is cooked, throw the chipotle paste and chopped jalapenos into the pan and stir through
  5. Put the contents of the pan into the slow cooker, followed by the kidney beans, chopped tomatoes and passata. Stir to combine everything and coat the brisket.
  6. Add the spices and the stock
  7. Stir again and cook on low for 6-8 hours
  8. Remove the cooked brisket from the slow cooker and shred with two forks
  9. Place the shredded meat back into the sauce and stir well to combine
  10. Serve with warm tortillas, guacamole and sour cream

I must admit, along with the dish I have planned for the final meal of this challenge, this was the meal I was MOST looking forward to trying and I’m not gonna lie…I think this was probably the BEST thing I’ve ever cooked in my slow cooker! The meat was melt-in-the-mouth tender and the combination of the sweet tomato and the smoky, spicy chipotle and jalapeños was TO DIE FOR. The flavour was so intense and the amount of spice was still  the right side of pleasurable. I was conscious of making it a dish that the girls could still tolerate and while they’re by NO means a pair of chilli wusses, Husband and I could have stood to have it a smidge spicier, but as it stood, it was still delicious with a bit of a kick.

I must warn you, when paired with tortillas, guacamole and sour cream this is definitely not an elegant dish; only eat this with people you love, who don’t mind seeing you with sauce running down your chin! However, the mess was well worth is and the whole family declared it a success!

Have you made anything in the slow cooker this week? If so, don’t forget to blog about it and link up below!

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Slow Cooker

7 Day Slow Cooker Challenge – Chicken and Chorizo Stew

JayneLeave a comment

So, you may or may not have noticed that this post is a day late and there is a very good reason for that.

We had a potato disaster.

As with most of my slow cooker recipes, I research the dish that I want to make and adjust them to our tastes and the fact that my Crock Pot cooks things a little quicker than a conventional slow cooker. All of the recipes for chicken and chorizo stew varied their cooking time between 8 and ten hours on low, so I figured 4 hours on high in my Crock Pot would be plenty. However, after 4 and a half hours on high, the potatoes were still rock hard! In fact, the dish wasn’t actually properly edible until about 9.30pm, by which time we’d declared it a disaster and gone to get fish and chips! The girls needed to eat and of course, all of this weeks shopping was geared toward slow cooked meals, so a takeaway was the only option.

However, once the stew WAS cooked, it was totally delicious. We’ve saved it for dinner today and I’m so glad we did, rather than abandoning it altogether. The chorizo has released its smoky flavour into the dish and broth around the meat and veg was rich and warming. Our first two dishes were things which were made to go with non-slow cooked accompaniments, but this was a true one pot meal, with the protein, carbs and veg all cooked together, which is what the essence of slow cooking is about for me.

Chicken and Chorizo Stew

Here’s how we made it:

Chicken and Chorizo Stew

7 Day Slow Cooker Challenge – Chicken and Chorizo Stew
Recipe Type: Slow Cooker
Cuisine: Spanish
Author: Jayne Crammond
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
A slow cooked stew with smoky chorizo and tasty chicken.
Ingredients
  • 600g chicken breast, cubed
  • One onion, diced
  • 450g potato, peeled and cubed
  • 250ml chicken stock
  • 2 x 400g cans of chopped tomatoes
  • 2 tsp chili powder
  • 200g chorizo, sliced
  • 1 red pepper, sliced
  • 1 green pepper, sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced or grated
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 30g black olives
Instructions
  1. Place all of the ingredients (apart from the olives) into the slow cooker
  2. Stir well
  3. Cook on high for 6-8 hours (depending on your slow cooker!)
  4. Add olives around 30 minutes before you’re ready to serve
  5. Serve with crusty bread and sour cream

I must admit, I often avoid dishes with potato in them as I’ve had a disaster like this before; the one and only time I cooked my lamb stew in my Crock Pot, the potatoes didn’t soften very well and I put it down to the fact that the pot was just too full, so the heat didn’t permeate as well as it could have. This stew was far less voluminous and the potato was the only root veg, so I thought we’d be fine, but alas not! I think the moral of this tale is to always give yourself PLENTY of time for dishes with potato to cook…I’d actually be tempted to put this on at about 8am in future, just to be sure it was completely cooked, but the effort would be worth it as the stew tastes fabulous!

Have you been slow cooking this week? Don’t forget to blog about it and link up below.

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Cooking and Recipes · Slow Cooker

7-Day Slow Cooker Challenge – Macaroni Cheese

Jayne1 Comment

Slow Cooker Macaroni CheeseToday is day 2 of our slow cooker challenge and in the slow cooker today we have macaroni cheese! This one is quite a leap of faith for me because not only have I never made macaroni cheese at all, I’ve never even tasted it (other than one mouthful of the stuff you get from a can). We opted for this today as yesterday’s dinner was very rich and meaty, so we wanted to have something which is totally different, and it’s also one of the days when Husband does his longer run, so some carbs will be very welcome! The recipe is super simple:

Slow Cooker Macaroni Cheese

Mum’s the Word 7-Day Slow Cooker Challenge – Macaroni Cheese
Recipe Type: Slow Cooker
Cuisine: American
Author: Jayne Crammond
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: up to 10
A slow-cooked oozy, cheesy pasta dish with bacon, served with garlic bread
Ingredients
  • 300g grated cheddar
  • 900ml milk
  • 200ml evaporated milk
  • 500g elbow macaroni
  • 1 tub of cream cheese
  • 150g streaky bacon
  • 2 tsp chopped garlic
Instructions
  1. Begin by dicing the bacon and browning it lightly in a frying pan
  2. Pat the bacon with some kitchen paper to soak up some of the grease before adding it to the slow cooker
  3. Chuck in everything else, give it a stir and cook on low for 2-3 hours
  4. Serve with garlic bread or a side of your choice

In terms of slow-cooking, this recipe couldn’t be any easier – you could probably even forgo the frying off of the bacon and just chuck in some lardons raw, but I wanted to get rid of some of the fat, and also have that lovely salty flavour of bacon when it’s been browned. The result was an oozy, gooey cheesy delight which the whole family absolutely loved. What’s most impressive is that this dish, which was absolutely huge and could have served a whole other family as well as us, costs around 91p per portion, including the garlic bread, which seems brilliant to me.

Both girls absolutely loved this and I think it’s a meal which would also work really well cooked the day before and eaten cold for lunch, or even at a picnic or barbecue as a really tasty side dish.

Have you tried slow cooker macaroni cheese before? What did you think? Have we inspired you to try it yourself?! Leave me a comment below…or even better, join in with our 7-day challenge and blog your own recipe, then come back and link up below!

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