slow cooker

[cimorene]

Using the slow cooker for the first time for a tex-mex chicken dish.

In my first trip to the internet in search of recipes yesterday, I turned up a lot of stuff that either was cheese-based, or seemed to fall into a few main categories: tex mex, chili, and chicken soup. I did see a few Asian and barbeque recipes that all called for pre-made sauces and seasoning mixes that aren't available here, but they were the outliers.

Anybody have any slow cooker or potentially slow-cookable soup/stew recs that are milk-byproduct and red meat -free?

Comments

[james]

I like just throwing chopped veggies, a can of soup broth (your choice, onion soup is good), and letting it cook for 3-4 hours. About 30 min before it's done, throw in a half cup of your choice grain - barley is yummy in soups and will absorb extra liquid forever.

Do you eat pork? Because making kaluha pork is divine, super simply, but you have to smell it cooking for sixteen hours.

When choosing veggies for the slow cooker, think root veggies -- stuff that will stay firm when cooked for awhile and not turn yellow green. Like broccoli doesn't do so well, but potatoes and carrots and cabbage are amazing. For flavor, just something with salt, soy sauce or soup broth, doesn't have to be fancy.

If you want a recipe for bbq that includes made-from-scratch sauce, lemme know!

[cimorene]

Thanks! That's a nice place to start. I do like root vegetable stews! :)

[laurajv]

Any stew recipe you like can just be tossed into the slow-cooker pretty much as-is, I've found.

red lentil, squash and chili stew

[jamjar]

One of my favourite slow-cooker recipes:

1 medium-large onion, diced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large carrot, finelychopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 chili, seeded and finely chopped OR left whole, depending on your preferred spice level

1 tbs or to taste ras el hanout (spice mix).

1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped

2-3 tins chopped tomatoes or about 650-1L passata & enough veg stock to make a total of about 1.5-2.0 L total. You can be very easy with this, because if it's dry, you can add more liquid and if it's too liquid, you can just let it cook down.


250g-300g red lentils. Could probably use split peas as well, but something that goes down to a mush (not puy!)

2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed or about 200g dried (soak overnight and cook for 30mins before adding).

OPTIONAL

1-2 tsp sea salt (to taste)

fresh coriander

Peppers (red or yellow are prettiest)

Hallumi

Greens you want to chuck in (cabbage, kale, spinach, whatever).

Instructions

Fry the onions, carrot and jalapeno in the olive oil for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft. Add the garlic and fry for 30 more seconds, and then add the ras el hanout, stirring well to coat.

If you're using a slow cooker, add everything to it , turn it on to low and leave it to cook for 6-8 hours (or longer-- mine were in there about 8 hours, because that's how my day worked out). The longer it cooks, the thicker it gets.

In a saucepan, add everything all at once, cook low until the lentils and squash is done-- maybe 40 minutes?- but keep an eye on it.

You can be very vague with this recipe-- it can easily have twice as many chickpeas, or you could do without them entirely. I've also added come kale to it in the past-- you know the sort of thing, whatever you have that needs using up. Ditto with lentils or squash-- it's a "use what you have" type recipe.

OPTIONAL

Add greens.

Cut the peppers in half, grill, peel and slice. Stir them in when everything else is pretty much done.

Before serving, slice some hallumi, fry and add.

Before serving, slice some freshly chopped coriander.

Choosy Begger

[jamjar]

Also, Choosy Beggar has some great slow-cooker recipes, including this one for maple barbecue which I can vouch for.

Also, you may find A Year of Slow Cooking helpful as well-- just for sheer volume, if nothing else.

And not slow cooker specific, but I really like Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks. Very whole-foods, all vegetarian, and with a lot of free-froms. I'm very omnivorous and I don't have any food intolerances, but I still get a lot of use out of her recipes-- they're tasty, they're not, you know, wholegrainier-than-thou.

Re: Choosy Begger

[cimorene]

Ooh, thank you, this is very promising looking! I'm in a weird place now that I'm trying to avoid milk as well as red meat, because I'm still easily irritated by wholegrainier-than-thou attitude - though not as much as by pseudoscientific dieting mumbojumbo like you get with paleo recipes -, but it's present in a HUGE quantity of recipe sources that produce appropriate stuff.