NOTE: Life gets so crazy sometimes. Believe it or not, I started this post 10 days ago. That being said, it's still a good time to check out some new slow cooker recipes!
The October 2018 issue of Cooking Light had a whole article on slow cooker recipes. I love my slow cooker! I know the Instant Pot is all the rage, but I don't have the storage room nor the inclination to go out and buy one any time soon. Besides, I only just bought a new slow cooker a couple of years ago, so I don't want to get rid of it so soon! The two features I definitely wanted when I was looking to replace mine (the on-off dial had broken off) were a warming feature, that would stop the cooking but still keep the food warm, and a heat-safe insert, so I could brown right in the insert then put it in the slow cooker, turn it on and go!
Slow cooker recipes that required browning and extra prep like that used to irritate me, since part of the convenience of the slow cooker is one-pot cooking (i.e., less to clean up), so I would totally skip over recipes that required getting out a skillet to brown or saute ingredients before putting them in the cooker. Now that my insert can be used on the stove top, however, I am much more amenable to them. Both of the recipes I tried required browning of the meat, and it does make a difference. Just be sure to get a really good, dark sear on it (which means using high heat). Because you need to have a higher heat, I don't use olive oil, sticking with canola oil, which has a higher smoke point, so less likely to burn at the higher temperatures.
Anyway, this week I tried two of the recipes feature in the Cooking Light article. The first one was Braised Pork with Potatoes and Shallots. I have to admit that, of the two, this one was my least favorite for two reasons. First, the sweet potatoes turned mushy, which I was afraid of and tried to layer them on top, but that didn't really help. Second, the sauce just wasn't that flavorful, even though I tried reducing the sauce to concentrate the flavors. Don't get me wrong, the family ate it up, but compared to the next recipe, this one came in second.
Here's the meat, getting a good char on. I love that I can do this in the slow cooker's insert!
Everyone into the pool! It was pretty full....
Here's a shot of the controls on my slow cooker. High, Low and warm functions (it automatically switches to "warm" once the cooking time is done) as well as a timer sold me on this one. The fact that I could use the insert on the stove top was a bonus!
I tried to reduce the cooking liquid to concentrate the flavors. Alas, I didn't boil it down enough, because the sauce still wasn't very flavorful...
And here's the finished product! I just piled everything on a platter to serve family-style. You can see what I mean about the mushy sweet potatoes. The family still ate it up (except for my youngest, who avoided the sweets). But you know what I did with the leftovers? I mushed up the sweet potatoes in the sauce, to make it thicker, then diced up the rest of the pork and potatoes, heated it all up and used it as a filling for savory crepes. And even son #2 at it up!
I don't have a picture of the leftovers as crepes, but here's a link to the recipe I used. I am actually including the discussion of how to make crepes, which I found helpful as well.
The second recipe was Asian Short Ribs. This one was a winner! I couldn't find short ribs, and chuck roast was even on sale, so I used that. The recipe was pretty straight forward, but I did switch it up a little by rubbing some of the meat with gochujang sauce, a fermented chili paste. Here's the version I have, which is really the only version that I found at the grocery store. It's not super-spicy, but it added some great flavor to the beef.
The rest of the recipe was pretty easy. The trickiest part, I think, is trimming off the tendons and silverskin, the shiny, silvery part of the roast that is part of the connective tissue. I find it slippery and hard to slice off. But anyway, I trimmed it off and still have all my fingers intact, so that's a win in my book! I didn't get quite as many pictures of the process for this recipe, but after browning the meat, it's really just dump and go with the rest of the ingredients:
Pre-cooking:
Post-cooking:
Here is a hasty picture of the finished product. I forgot to take a "pretty" picture, so this is a photo of my son's partially-eaten plate. LOL I served it over rice with steamed broccoli, because I didn't think the mushrooms were enough to make it "healthy". It was delicious!
Do you have any new favorite recipes for your slow cooker? Let me know!
