Category Archives: entrees

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.

Bok-os!

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Problem #1: the week 7 veggie box shows up with just over 2lbs of bok choi in it. Holy carp…what am I going to do with TWO POUNDS of bok choi?

Problem #2: the usual Saturday evening blahs over what to have for dinner on the one unplanned night of the week, and we were missing one of the usual key ingredients. We decided to make tacos, and though it took some convincing, I was finally able to persuade dh that if you have no ground turkey in the house, the taco gods will still approve of you making tacos with diced chicken. [We don’t typically use ground beef – the one exception being the “meatloaf mix” of ground beef and pork that we get from BJ’s a couple of times a year.]

…and then I said, “What if we use bok choi instead of taco shells?” We had taco shells in the house. As a matter of fact, we had two boxes of them, due to a shopping oops on my part a few weeks before. Still, the idea intrigued him. “So, what – it would be like the lettuce cups from PF Chang’s?” he asked. Yep, that was the idea.

So, we created the tacos in the usual fashion (less the ground turkey) and then put them on bok choi leaves instead of taco shells. The verdict? OMG, this may be the only way I have tacos again if I can ever help it. And thus, we proudly present…

BOK-OS!

Note also that this is a bit healthier than using the shells – at least 100 cal less. And, you get all the benefits of the hard shell (crunch!) with the benefit of the soft taco (no breakage!). It’s really a win-win situation.

Bok-os

Bok-os: Crunchy, soft, healthy...what a combination!

Prep Time: 5 mins

Cooking Time: 15-20 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 Tb olive oil

1/2 pkg reduced sodium taco seasoning

2/3 cup water

4 leaves bok choi, washed

toppings of your choice (we went with reduced fat sour cream, shredded monterey jack/cheddar blend, and medium-heat salsa)

Make it Happen

1. Dice the chicken breasts (small pieces) and cook with the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.

2. When the chicken is fully cooked, add the taco seasoning and water; stir to combine and stir frequently throughout cooking to ensure no sticking.

3. Once the majority of the liquid is gone from the pan, remove the chicken from the heat. Serve on leaves of bok choi (one per person), with the toppings of their choice, and fold the leaf as you’re eating it (like a soft taco shell).