Category Archives: crock pot cooking

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

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This is a really simple and fairly saucy dish that takes virtually no prep time and makes for a great winter meal. I’ve seen other stroganoff recipes before, but most of them are heavy on the beef. A trick I learned from being on Weight Watchers years ago is to substitute mushrooms for beef, for example: having a portobello mushroom on a burger bun instead of a beef (or even turkey) burger. I also like mushrooms in my stroganoff, so I laugh LOUDLY AND HEARTILY at the recipes that suggest a simple 4oz can of mushroom stems and caps. Really, folks?

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of this before it left the dinner table, so this is actually a shot of what went into the fridge. Depending upon how hungry you are, this can serve six people easily enough; we get two nights of meals out of this dish, sometimes with a little to spare. This is a fairly saucy one, but since we serve it over butter noodles (or occasionally with rice), the sauce finds a home. You could even try a crusty bread as a side, to help sop up some of the extra sauce. Save yourself on the prep time by buying washed and sliced mushrooms in your produce section (or by prepping them the night before and just shoving them in the fridge). We also buy our stew beef already cubed; again, it saves time. The beef costs the same whether whole or pre-cut; the mushrooms tend to be a little more expensive if pre-sliced/washed, but I’m willing to pay that price to save on the time of doing it myself. Some call it lazy; I consider it being efficient and knowing when to outsource.

 

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

Just because it's out of focus doesn't mean it's not delicious!

 

Prep Time: 5 mins before cooking; 5 mins before serving

Cooking Time: 8-10 hrs on LOW

Serves: 4-6

 

Ingredients

2 cans golden mushroom soup

1-1/2 lbs stew beef, cubed

1-1/2 lbs white mushrooms, washed and sliced

8oz french onion sour cream dip

 

Make it Happen

1. Coat the inside of a 4qt crock pot with non-stick cooking spray.

2. Add the soup, beef and mushrooms to the crock pot; stir well to combine.

3. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10hrs.

4. When the cook time is over, turn off the crock pot. Add the dip and stir well to combine before serving.

CSA Cleanout Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin

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This one is a recipe of necessity: my CSA veggie boxes have taken over the fridge! The counters, the fridge…everywhere I look there are veggies that need a home: in our BELLEHS. It also didn’t help that I spent part of the evening Sunday night trying to figure out which potatoes survived the house turning into a fridge for a few days (the answer: NOT the new potatoes or the red potatoes, sadly). We also have a week coming up where generating leftovers is a bad idea.

Thus, many of the items in this dish came from our CSA veggie boxes, specifically: the onions, sweet potatoes, apples, carrots and honey. The bulk of the prep time in this dish, well – ALL of the prep time, really, came from the chopping that takes up steps 1-5, below. The rest of it is about a 5 minute process. So, if you want to do any of this the night before, I’d recommend going for it.

We have large plastic containers in our house for just such a reason – so the onions, sweet potatoes, shallots and apples were all prepped the night before. TIRED ME, I put the apples on the top of the container with the sweet potatoes. Were I being smart, the apples would’ve gone on the bottom of the container so that I could’ve just upended the thing right into the crock pot and had them in the order I wanted. (I prefer to put onions and the root veggies at the bottom of the crock pot so that they can take the bulk of the heat – they tend to stand that much better than, say, apples, which would just turn straight into applesauce.)

The carrots were cut up in the morning too, only because I was out of energy by the time I was done with a long day that I capped off with prepping onions, potatoes, shallots and apples for the next morning. And, really, if your fear is that the apples might turn brown as they oxidize: feel free to let go of that fear. First, if you have the lid on your container fairly tight, that problem may be minimized. Second, if they’re going in the crock pot, you’ll never notice whether they turned brown overnight or not.

This dish came out sweet and yummy. We didn’t pair it with a starch, but you certainly could serve this with some rice or couscous. The sauce is plentiful and light in nature, and it lends a nice sweetness to the whole thing. Because we let it go for longer than the required cook time, the pork just fell apart on us (never a bad thing), and both the sweet potatoes and apples just fell apart on the tongue. Again, this is a good problem to have.

I would say that this is a recipe that could easily be done with chicken instead of pork BUT I would then adjust the cook time down to 6-8 hrs.

 

CSA Cleanout Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin

Porktastic!

Prep Time: 30-40 min
Cooking Time: 8-10 hrs on LOW
Serves: 4

Ingredients
2 small (or 1 large) yellow onions
2 large sweet potatoes
1 shallot
5 medium empire apples
6 medium/large carrots
1-1/2 lbs pork tenderloin
14-1/2 oz can low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup apple juice
2 Tb cider vinegar
2 Tb wildflower honey
1 Tb brown sugar

Make it Happen
1. Peel and thinly slice the onion(s); place in the bottom of a 5qt oval crock pot in a single layer. They should cover the majority of the bottom of the crock pot.

2. Wash and chop the sweet potatoes into pieces no more than about 1/2″ thick and 1″ wide. Place the sweet potatoes in the crock pot.

3. Peel and mince the shallot. Sprinkle about one-third of the shallot on top of the sweet potatoes.

4. Peel the carrots and remove the ends; chop into small rounds, no more than about 1/3″ thick. Place in the crock pot. Sprinkle about one-third of the shallots on top of the carrots.

5. Wash the apples; slice in half, remove the core and then cut the apples into roughly 12 slices. Place the apples in the crock pot; sprinkle the remaining shallots on top of the apples.

6. Place the pork tenderloin on top of the apples. Pour the broth on top of the tenderloin and pour around it, on top of the apples and veggies.

7. In a measuring cup, pour the apple juice and the cider vinegar; pour this combination on top of the tenderloin and then around it, on top of the apples and veggies.

8. Drizzle the honey on top of the tenderloin, using either the flat of the spoon or a brush to coat the top of the tenderloin evenly with the honey.

9. Sprinkle brown sugar on top of the tenderloin.

10. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hrs.

11. Remove pork from crock pot and cut into 1/2″ thick pieces before serving with veggies, apples & sauce.

Crock Pot Potato Leek Soup

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When the week 6 CSA box held leeks (yeay! leeks!), I knew that I had to make potato-leek soup. It’s one of those great dishes that I have no idea why I don’t make it. So, here I am. Making it.

I perused some recipes to see what others have done in terms of making a soup, but most of the soups I saw involved the use of a stick blender or a food processor to make the soup smooth. I knew that might not improve acceptance from the kids, and neither dh nor I were really interested in a smooth soup. Chunky seemed the way to go. I also saw some folks suggesting that you put bacon in during cooking or after, and I liked the idea of bacon during cooking, to impart some extra flavor.

What this then turned into is basically a loaded baked potato soup with leeks and shallots AND THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Before bringing this to the table, I hit up the grocery store for a nice crusty boule – and that went ever so nicely. Soup on a crisp Fall night is great, but soup with a nice crusty bread is just divine.

I will note that dh and I diverge a little on soup style. He wanted chunky, and I was happy to oblige. He wanted something chowder-esque, being a native New Englander, so I obliged. However, when he dared tell me afterward that we could have gone with less bacon so that the flavor of the soup could have been more subtle, that’s where I drew the line! Less bacon? Did he know who he married? I’m no Paula Deen, but saying “too much bacon” near me is like claiming that a dessert has “too much chocolate”. Say what? Try again, buddy. I know that “subtle” is code for “bland”, because native New England food isn’t always known for having much spice to it. However, I’m NOT a native New Englander, and I believe in flavor! So, no bacon corners were cut in the recipe listed below. I stand by all that bacon. Mmm. Bacon.

One thing we definitely agreed upon: this soup is totally worth making again. Of course, it wasn’t until after dinner was well over that I realized I never took a picture of it. We’d dug into it so eagerly (and then drained the entire thing between the two of us) that the only picture I have to show you is this:

The dish formerly known as Crock Pot Potato Leek Soup

If you can't tell, we *really* liked it

(All deference to Daily Cynema, who totally understands how this happens in food blogging…)

As for the servings below, please note that a “serving” is a single bowl. Since dh and I each had two bowls + bread as our entire dinner, we emptied the crock pot between us. If you serve this as an appetizer/soup course/accompaniment to a larger meal, then you can probably get away with 4 servings. If you plan to serve this as a cup of soup, rather than in a bowl, you could probably get 6 servings, easily.

Prep Time: 20-30 min

Cooking Time: 8-10 hrs on LOW

Serves: 4 bowls (or ~6 cups)

Ingredients

3 leeks

1 lb red potatoes

1 large shallot or 1 medium yellow onion

8 slices cooked bacon

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp white pepper

1 bay leaf

1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream

shredded cheddar cheese or monterey jack/cheddar blend, for topping

Make it Happen

1. Wash the leeks and remove the stems; you’ll only be using the white part of the leeks. Thinly slice the leeks and add them to a 4qt crock pot.

2. Wash and peel the potatoes; remove any eyes. Then give them a quick rinse and dice them. Add the potatoes to the crock pot.

3. Peel and thinly slice the shallot and add to the crock pot. (If using a yellow onion instead, peel and mince it before adding it to the crock pot.)

4. Crumble or roughly chop the bacon slices so that no piece is more than about 3/4 inch wide. Add the bacon to the crock pot, then stir to combine all of the ingredients.

5. Add the broth, salt and white pepper to the crock pot, then stir to combine.

6. Add the bay leaf. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hrs.

7. Remove the bay leaf. Add the sour cream to the crock pot and stir well to combine.

8. Serve with cheese on the side and allow people to add cheese on top, as they wish.