Tag Archives: Crock Pot

Jan 27 2012

What’s For Dinner: My Favorite Appliance

In the final installment of the series author Kathi Lipp asks us bloggers to talk about our favorite kitchen appliance.  For me, it’s the slow cooker, hands down.

When it comes to taking the hassle out of cooking nothing beats it.  You don’t have to babysit it, just get the ingredients in there and go.  There are TONS of recipes available online and in print.  In fact, there are whole cookbooks devoted to it. One of my favorites is the Fix it and Forget it Cookbook. It doesn’t have any photos, which is a bummer when it comes to cookbooks, but has all the basic recipes.  It often includes several variations for each dish and I like to make up my own based on the variations.

If you have to get out of the house early in the morning I would recommend setting up everything in the crock the night before. This is especially true for recipes that involve browning meats.  I know I never had time for anything but dump and go recipes when I was working.

Crock Pots are relatively inexpensive when it comes to kitchen tools. The one pictured is only $44 on Amazon.  A good roasting pan will set you back more than a slow cooker. Although everybody should have a roasting pan…but that’s a topic for another day.  I choosing a pot, make sure you get one with a removable ceramic insert (most new cookers are like this) so you can clean it easily.  Also, consider the size of your family when picking a cooker.  They range from around 3 quarts to 7 quarts, and you need to fill it 2/3 full for it to cook properly. Mine is a 7 quart and I love it. We are not a big family, but I like to have left-overs and entertain so a big pot works better for me.

I hope you have enjoyed these posts. It has been a great week knowing specifically what we were having for dinner, in fact, I have several more days already planned! If you are interested in Kathi Lipp’s book, “The What’s For Dinner Solution” it is inexpensive and has great tips for cooking ahead, bulk grocery shopping and storage, using the freezer and a whole slew of recipes to boot!

What’s your favorite kitchen appliance? Freezer, food processor…or something else? Leave your answer in the comments below! I will pick a winner to receive a copy of the the book from among the comments from this week’s post. Thanks for stopping by!

 

About Kathi:
Kathi Lipp is a busy conference and retreat speaker of The Husband Project: 21 Days to Loving Your Man—on Purpose and with a Plan, The Marriage Project: 21 Days to More Love and Laughter, and The Me Project: 21 Days to Living the Life You’ve Always Wanted. She is a frequent guest on Focus on the Family and dozens of other radio programs.

Church leaders and women’s ministry directors rely on Kathi to help women move from living out of obligation to enjoying godly passion. She speaks to thousands of women across the US and Canada every year.

Kathi and her husband, Roger, are the parents of four young adults and live in San Jose, California.

Purchase Links

Amazon.com The “What’s for Dinner?” Solution

ChristianBooks.com The “What’s for Dinner?” Solution

BN.com The “What’s for Dinner?” Solution

Link To Kathi’s Reader’s Freebies Reader’s Freebies

 

 

Related posts:

Oct 17 2011

Russian Chicken – Crock Pot Version

Russian Chicken is a big hit with us. It was served at our wedding rehearsal dinner and more recently it was the subject of my first article on BlogCritics.org.

Today it was my turn to make dinner for a friend who just had a baby.  I decided I would make the family Russian Chicken, and some for us too. But the timing was going to be off if I put both dishes in the oven early.  I quickly came up with a solution using my trusty Crock Pot.

I prepared the dinner for delivery in the usual way – baked in the oven.  Knowing that I would be away from the house for an hour or more to make the delivery, I set up our chicken in the crock pot.  I had to guess on the time and temperature, so I  placed it on high and set the timer for three hours, just to be safe.  The total cooking time was just 2½ hours. It was just as good as the usual method, perhaps even better.

Russian Chicken in the Crock Pot

4-6 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 cup Wishbone Russian salad dressing

1 cup apricot preserves

1 package onion soup mix

Mix dressing, jam and soup mix in a small bowl.  Place chicken pieces in the crock pot. Cover with sauce and cook on high setting for 2-3 hours.  Serve with steamed rice and salad or vegetable. It was great to be able to leave the house with dinner safely cooking. Crock-Pot to the rescue once again!

 

Related posts:

Sep 30 2011

Pear Honey Jam

PEAR HONEY!

My mom and my paternal grandmother made pear honey when I was a child.  It was among my favorite home-made jams.  Plum jam being the other.  Browsing the grocery store ads last week I saw that our local SaveMart had Bartlett pears on sale for $0.29 per pound. I could not pass up such a great deal on one of my family’s favorite fruits.  I bought 8 pounds (about 24 pears) with the idea of making pear honey.

I browsed several websites looking for a good slow cooker pear honey recipe.  Many of them had orange juice or peel, others had cinnamon, and another included star anise (it was a pear butter recipe).  I finally came across one that seemed close.  It was on Mommy’s Kitchen and was from a Paula Dean cookbook.  It consisted of four ingredients: pears, sugar, crushed pineapple and lemon juice.

Now I was on the right track.  I didn’t follow her recipes exactly, I tweaked it to meet my own tastes.  For example, the original recipe called for 10 cups of sugar! Yikes, that’s too much, even for me.  Here’s what you need:

  • Fresh pears, 8 lbs or 20 medium size. They should be ripe.
  • Sugar, 5 cups
  • Crushed Pineapple in juice, one can
  • Lemon juice, 1 TBSP
Directions:
  1. Wash, peel, core and dice up pears

    Beautiful Bartlett Pears!

  2. Add the diced pears to the crock pot.
  3. Pour the crushed pineapple into the crock pot
  4. Add the lemon juice; stir it well.

    Everything into the pot!

  5. Set on LOW for 8-10 hours.

    It will turn a golden brown color as it cooks--the color of honey.

  6. Puree using an immersion blender.  If you don’t have one, puree pears in a blender before adding to the crock pot.

    My very handy immersion blender!

  7. When finished ladle into canning jars to process.*
The result was delicious. It tastes very much like the jam I remember.  The 5 cups of sugar were plenty.  In fact, I might be able to cut it down to 3-4 the next time I make it.

Sweeter than honey!

*My yield was 5 pints. I don’t have any canning jars so I put my jam into Ziploc pints with the screw-top lid.  I put one in the freezer, and the rest in the fridge.  I plan to give a pint to my parents, my in-laws and the other two we will use up in no time, I’m sure.  If I had the right supplies for canning it would have been easy to do.

Yield was 5 pints. (16 oz Zip-Lock containers)

Using the crock pot made it so simple.  I was able to set it up and go on with my day. This evening I ladled the sweet golden jam into containers.  I made baking powder biscuits in the morning so we could try out the new jam!

Related posts:

Sep 28 2011

Chile Verde Pork

I bought a beautiful large (5 lb) boneless port shoulder roast a few weeks ago.  It was on sale so I grabbed it and threw it in the freezer, not knowing what I would make with it. I took it out of the freezer four days ago to defrost.

This morning I finally decided to make chile verde.  I’d never made it before, but that didn’t stop me from trying.  In fact, I’ve become more adventurous with my cooking lately, trying lots of new recipes and creating some of my own for the first time.

I browsed several recipes online to get some ideas of how to make the green sauce. This is what I came up with, which is an adaptation of Chile Verde on Simply Recipes.

5 lb. Boneless Pork Shoulder (pork butt roast)

12 tomatillos

1-2 Anaheim chilies, or jalapenos

3 TBSP fresh cilantro

2 TBSP Olive oil

Salt & pepper

1 small onion, chopped

1 TBSP minced garlic

Directions:

  1. Remove husks from tomatillos. Slice in half crosswise and place on a baking sheet, cut side down.  Roast under the broiler for up to 10 minutes, as long as necessary for them to start turning brown.

    Roasted Tomatillos

  2. While the tomatillos are broiling, roast Anaheim chilies over an open flame. Place roasted chilies in a plastic bag and seal.  After a few minutes the blackened skin will peel off easily.  Remove stem and seeds.
  3. Place tomatillos, chilies and cilantro in the blender.  Pulse a few times to blend the ingredients into a sauce.

    Blended Green Sauce

  4. Cut pork into 1-2 inch pieces. Remove excess fat when possible.
  5. Heat olive oil in a large skillet and brown pork in batches.  Season the meat with salt and pepper.

    Browning Adds Flavor

  6. Place cooked pork in crock pot. Pour in green sauce.
  7. Saute the chopped onion and garlic in the pan used to brown the pork.

    Saute Onion & Garlic

  8. Add sautéed onion and garlic to the crock pot.

    Place meat, sauce & veggies in cooker.

  9. Add 1 cup of water. Stir and set to on LOW for 7-8 hours.

    Finished Chile Verde

This recipe will make a large batch-serves 8 or more people.  I used a 7 quart slow cooker for this large amount of meat.  To fewer servings use less meat – about 3 lbs and omit decrease water to 1/2 cup.  

Serve with warm tortillas, sour cream, guacamole and Mexican rice.

 

Related posts:

Sep 14 2011

Beef Stroganoff – WITHOUT the Canned Soup

Everything into the pot!

I bought a nice beef pot roast at Costco yesterday to make beef stroganoff in my crock pot. Since I’m doing an all scratch cooking diet, that means no onion soup mix or canned cream of mushroom soup.

I looked up a few recipes online, but most had canned cream soups.  So I decided to wing it and make up my own.

Here’s what I did:

  1. Mix flour with a little salt and pepper in a gallon size zip-lock bag
  2. Cut the beef into cubes
  3. Dredge the beef in the flour and brown in a skillet with olive oil

    Sean wouldn't eat his. Luckily that meant I got a photo of the finished product.

  4. Place the beef in the crock pot
  5. Brown up sliced onion and mushrooms in the leftover drippings
  6. Add the veggies to the crock pot
  7. Add 1/2 cup of hot water mixed with 2 tsp of beef bouillon paste (Better Than Bouillon brand)
  8. Set the cooker to low for six hours.
  9. When it’s time to serve dinner, boil some wide egg noodles.
  10. Stir in 1/2 cup of sour cream to the beef just before serving.

It was creamy and good, and not too salty since there was no mushroom soup mix.  You can always add more salt at the table – that’s my philosophy.

Related posts: