Enter the crockpot. I can't tell you how much I LOVE my crockpot!!! I've been experimenting with it lately and have LOVED what I can do with it. For a week, we had something from the crockpot every night. It was great. I've been modifying meals or finding other ways to prepare parts of a meal in the crockpot so I don't have to do much in the heat of the day when we're hot and tired. I also can't tell you how wonderful it feels to have dinner ready (or at least started) by 10 am. It makes me giddy.
I'll need to post recipes, but I don't have time tonight. Here's a list of a few of the meals we've been using the crockpot for:
~Chicago chicken (or cranberry chicken): I like it 10 times better in the crockpot because the meat is so tender and juicy and just falls apart. So good.
~Chicken enchiladas: Cook the sauce with raw chicken all day long and it'll just fall apart when you assemble the enchiladas.
~Sweet pork burritos: Yeah, this was already a crockpot meal
~Hawaiian haystacks: I would have done it in the crockpot tonight if we had had chicken. But we didn't. Anyway, you'd just cook the cream of chicken soup and raw chicken all day and it'd be ready to serve.
~Tacos/frito pie/etc. : Cook your meat, beans, etc. all day
~Chimichangas: Cooked the meat and seasoning and then assembled the chimis at dinner time
~Baked tortellini: I made a homemade marinara and let it simmer for a couple hours. Then, about 1 hour before eating time, I added the tortellini and topped it with cheese. By dinner time, it was perfect...a little thick.
~Any broth soup: Add veggies/potatoes 3 hours before eating and noodles 1 hour before and it'll be great.
~Chili/taco soup: dump it all in and let it go.
~Sloppy joes: same as above...dump it all in and let it go.
Then there's the usual roast beef, BBQ chicken sandwiches, pulled pork burritos, and really almost anything you want. You can even make a casserole like shepherd's pie or mary's hamburger in the crockpot. All meat is so much more tender and flavorful in the crockpot, though if you cook them all day long, they tend to fall apart. If that's not what you're going for, either cook it for a shorter time or don't use the crockpot.
Anyway, I never knew how much I would LOVE and use this appliance. I know I'll burn it out soon from so much use and I'll need to upgrade as our family grows. But for now, I'm loving it.
If you have any great crockpot recipes or ideas, pass them along!!!
3 comments:
Those all sound so good! Recipes would be great! I love just cooking a whole chicken in the crockpot...clean it out (if you can while your pregnant!), stick an onion in the middle and cook. I don't even add water, but you can if you want. You can use the shredded chicken for all kinds of things!
yay for giddy dinner mornings! I love those too. Mix 1 can cream of chicken, 1/4 cup water or chicken broth, 1 packet italian seasoning packet and let cook for 2 hours. Add 8oz cream cheese and cook one more hour. Stir cream cheese in once it is soft enough and you will have a delish sauce to serve over pasta. I usually double everything except the cream cheese because we LOVE lots of sauce...and besides...no recipe needs two blocks of cream cheese. :)
Cheri! I love this post because I am in LOVE with my crock-pot. I exchange a lot of crock-pot recipes with a friend of mine who's husband is also a seminary teacher (we both like it because we don't know if the guys will be home as early as 3:30 or more like 5:30, but with a crock-pot it doesn't matter so much). ANYWAY, she finally collected all of the crock-pot recipes she'd collected from people and e-mailed it out to everyone. I'll send the "e-mail cookbook" your way.
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