New BIG Crockpot!! Yipee

Fun! One little tip from my large crockpot: it works really quickly. I usually have to halve the time or use the low temp when it calls for high. Just something to keep an eye on. My favorite recipe is to just put chicken in there with salsa, and then shred it for tacos that night. Easy! Similar to Worldof4's idea.

I know there are websites that tell you how to make lasagna, enchiladas, meatloaf and other creations in a crock pot. It might be fun to check those out, I have never made anything like that in a crock pot but that is just me, nothing against it just never have done that. I make mostly hearty soups and legumes in my crock pot but my two FAVORITE things to make is chicken and dump cake.

For the chicken: I get a whole chicken, give it a salt bath (rub ckn with salt, don't hurt the skin, I just pour salt down the cavities, then rinse VERY, VERY WELL ) stick it on top of a bed of finely chopped carrots, onion, celery (with leaves), garlic. Put some more onion on top and a little more garlic, followed with a little salt, pepper, parsley and paprika. Pour a couple cups of water around the sides and cook until it literally falls off the bone and is the most moist and delicious chicken ever.

Dump cake: Fill bottom of crock pot with a can of pie filling ( I use apple a lot). In a bowl mix together 1 box of vanilla cake and 1 melted stick of butter. Pour the crumbly cake mix on top of the pie filling, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, cook on high for a few hours. Serve warm with cold ice cream, de-licious! Mix and match with cherry/chocolate cake, blueberries/strawberry cake etc

You are making me hungry!

My go-to chicken:

Crock pot rotisserie chicken.

Put 3-5 baseball sized balls of crumpled aluminum foil into the bottom of the crock pot. Rinse chicken and remove giblet bag. Season lightly with Lawry's Seasoning salt. Put chicken breast side up into crockpot and set on "LOW." Cook all day. 10-ish hours.

30 minutes before dinner, Gently remove chicken to a foil lined sheet pan. Be sure to leave drippings in crockpot. Place under broiler in oven for about 10-15 minutes to crisp the skin.

Remove foil balls and pour drippings into a saucepan on range and set on low heat. Add some chicken broth if you'll need more gravy. Make a roux in a small skillet and add to drippings to thicken. Add nothing. Best gravy ever. :-)

We usually have some potatoes, corn and stuffing for side dishes. Just boxed stuff or frozen, nothing complicated.

Enjoy!

ETA: The foil keeps the chicken up off the bottom of the crock pot where it will get greasy. And keeping the chicken up keeps the drippings nice and clear.

CROCK POT BAG!.. are a must.. no point in this easy meal if you need to scrub :)

Beef Strogonoff.
1 lb of Round steak
Cut into 1-1 ½ links. Sear them on all sides.

Beef Bouillon- one cup of water.
3 cloves of Garlic
1-2 table spoons of worshire sauces
1 can cream of mushroom soup. (can make the GFversion if needed)
If you like it, you can use 1 can of mushrooms (use the juice from the mushrooms as part of your 1 cup of water)

Put all in crock pot, Low 8 hrs

When you get home.. Rice or egg noodles, and then add 8 oz of sour cream while you are making the rice or noodles. (GF if necessary)

This is one of my familys favs

Roasts, soups etc.. are also great in the crock pot.

Your new crock pot should have come with a cookbook with recipes just for crocks. There should be some great recipes and ideas in there.

What type meal do you feel like eating? Put that in your post and wait for for the ideas to come in.

It is Friday, so meat is not on the menu for us. We will have vegetable soup. I will start with a broth and toss in carrots, zucchini, a tomato, a potato, onion, garlic, celery, a cup of kidney beans, and a few green beans. Of course I will add a bay leaf, salt, and pepper to taste. Along with that, we will have grilled cheese sandwiches.

Have fun, you will love it.

When you go to the liquor store, ask them for a dry white wine. If I use it for cooking, I always go cheap.

Beef stew:
cube beef roast
brown meat in oil (on stove), season with garlic powder, salt & pepper and add some worchestshire sauce
in crockpot combine beef stock (1 1/2 cups (maybe I don't measure), 2 packages onion soup mix, 1 onion roughly cut, baby carrots (as many as you like) and chopped potatoes (as many as you like) and couple cloves of garlic minced (finely chopped)
Add cubed, browned beef then deglaze the pan with red wine and let it reduce briefly (meaning when the pan is still hot I pour in enough to cover the bottom of the pan and let it cook a bit to thicken) and then add that to the crock pot mixture
Set it on low for 8 hours
About 1/2 before serving, put some of the juices into a cup and whisk in about 2 TBSP of cornstarch and add back to the stew and turn on high to thicken it. Add more if necessary.

It tastes incredible!

I use mine quite a bit but, nothing fancy. This morning before work I threw in a bag of frozen chicken breast and BBQ sauce and set it on low. When I get home from work, we will be having BBQ chicken nachos. yummy. There are tons of fancy recipes online. Enjoy your new crockpot! :)

I've got the following in mine right now-
1/2 stick butter.
two onions chopped.
two bags of frozen zucchini
1 cup of chicken broth
topped with two chicken breasts (the chicken breasts are seasoned with paprika, salt & pepper).
I put the breasts on top, and not underneath so they don't boil.
once its all cooked through, I plan to shred the chicken and serve over rice pilaf.

Hubs likes to use it to make chicken tikka masala
I like to use it to make lentil soup with the following (red lentils, onion, plum tomato, salt, pepper, cumin, boullion, curry powder to taste).
We also use it for minestrone- (brown lentils, onion, celery, carrots, potato, salt, pepper, boullion, parsely)
We have used it to make vegetarian chilli- red kidney beans, black beans, jalapeno, tomato, onion, corn, pepper, salt, pepper, cumin, cayanne, celantro).
It makes for a good potato leek soup.

good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

Good questions you asked. Let me address the wine first. Yes there is a "cooking wine". DO NOT USE IT. It is horrible. You can pretty much use whatever wine you want.

When it comes to white wine, a cheap chardonnay like the Barefoot Chardonnay from California works just fine. It is fairly inexpensive. We get large bottles from Costco, but you can get smaller bottles at QFC.

Another possibility for both white and red, but red in particular would be Yellow Tail from Australia. We use the shiraz from that line to cook with, but the whites are good too. Again, we get them from Costco, but this one is available at QFC.

I don't have any crock pot recipes, but I bet if you searched google or bing you might come up with something. You could also try these sites for recipes:

www.cooks.com
www.epicurious.com
www.recipes.com

Good luck and have fun!

BBQ Pulled Pork

1 Pork roast
1 Onion
a few garlic cloves
bbq spice rub
bbq sauce

Roughly chop an onion place in bottom of crock pot. Peel the garlic cloves and smash them with the side of the knife, place in crock pot.

Put pork roast in the crock pot and rub with the bbq spice rub. Fill crock pot 3/4 full of water. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Take pork out of crock pot, dump out the liquid, onions, garlic. Put pork back in the crock pot shred, add bbq sauce & serve.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rump-Roast-Au-Jus/Detail.aspx
This is my favorite crock pot recipe -- The beef comes out spicy and delicious and the leftovers are perfect for tacos, spaghetti sauce, beef and potato hash, everything. An easy must make!

Look up recipes on Fix it and Forget it (or buy the cookbook) - it's crockpot cookbook and it has everything from breakfast to desserts. I highly recommend the lasagna recipe (yeah - crockpot lasagna!!)
Dry white wine - a chardonnay. Red Wine - a merlot.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-4...

Chili is always great.
Jambalaya
Any stew is good too.
A few times a year I cut up a boneless leg of lamb into bite sized pieces, brown it, then put it in the crock pot for stew (beef broth, onions, carrots)
The meat comes out so tender (but doesn't fall apart) everyone just loves it.
A lot of the time if a recipe calls for wine I'll use some cream sherry (never cooking sherry - that stuff is awful).
Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.

You have opened up a world of new cooking, good for you!

Any of the Fix it and Forget It cookbooks are great!

You can cook with regular wine but I don't drink so I do the cooking wines all the time. They have salt in them and are not good for drinking but they last for a long time and regular wine does not. A chef would be incensed but whatever...

There was a post a couple days ago on soups that I gave a great recipe I made up and threw in the crock pot. There are many on Mamapedia.

If you take the time to sear ( cook it quickly, over high heat) the beef cuts before you put them in the crockpot they have more flavor and look more appetizing. I put Monteal Steak Seasoning on my roasts and then sear them before putting them in on a bed of root veggies. Add some low sodium beef broth and you have a meal! Or a roast with a jar of peperocinies (sp?) and a dry Ranch dressing packet gives you great sandwiches. have fun!

Easiest way to get recipes is to go on line. Just search crock pot recipes and you will have so many, you will not know what to do. I am making cheeses noodle casserole in mine today. Great way to cook.