by Donna | Feb 6, 2013
I told you that last week’s chicken and rice soup was the easiest soup I ever make. Then this one is definitely a close second! It is the same concept–use the crock pot to cook the chicken over night. Stir it up to shred it (it shreds that easily in the crock!), cook your noodles in broth, add seasonings, and put back in the crock on warm.
Here is the unofficial recipe:
Combination of boneless, skinless thighs and breasts (or just one or the other)
Store bought “homemade” noodles
broth (or chicken base to create broth above and beyond the broth created from the cooked chicken)
Seasonings–I used the following: garlic and herb seasoning, parsley, sage, onion powder, garlic powder, dried celery, and Forward (a combination seasoning containing heavy black pepper, paprika…and more…)
1. Cook chicken in large crock pot overnight or all day.
I always start chicken on high for an hour, so it is really hot then turn it to low for the night. I read somewhere years ago that you shouldn’t start chicken on low because it is too low at first, and the chicken could become spoiled–not sure if it’s true, but I’ve always done my chicken this way.
2. Next morning or an hour before dinner: Boil “homemade” noodles in broth until they are al dente.
I keep my soup in the crock all day for my teachers to eat out of, so I don’t fully cook my pastas; they become too soft if they are completely precooked then kept in a warm crock all day. If you are serving this soup immediately and not putting it back into the crock pot, you might want to fully cook the noodles .
3. Optional: If you like more aromatics in your soup (as opposed to onion powder and garlic powder and dried celery), while the noodles are cooking, stir fry small amount of onion and garlic and lots of celery in butter or olive oil until onions are extremely translucent.
4. While noodles are cooking, take two large serving forks and dig into the chicken and shred it.
This will go really fast (like two or three minutes) if your chicken is tender and not overcooked. (I cook my chicken for 8 or 10 hours on low after the hour on high, and it is never tough; you could definitely cook it faster on high, if needed.)
5. Once noodles are done cooking, put noodles, broth and all, into the shredded chicken.
Add the aromatics and the rest of the seasonings. Taste broth and add more base and/or seasonings as needed.
6. Turn on low if noodles were truly al dente and let the flavors mix.
by Donna | Jan 31, 2013
I have discovered new-found freedom in cooking ground meat in my crock pot. This week’s Low Maintenance Chili is an example of this. While I do not have the exact ingredients for the chili (I usually just throw my chili together), I do have some notes on using the crock pot for the meat AND the soup–and for spending very little time doing so.
This “recipe” takes about 15 mins of work time on the part of the cook and only two dishes–the crock pot insert and a strainer/colander to drain the grease. This is a perfect dish for my Crock Pot Wednesday in which I assemble on Tuesday, stick in the fridge, and cook on Wednesday morning. The fifteen minutes of work is really just stirring the meat some and opening the cans and dumping them in.
Ingredients (sort of)
5 lbs of ground beef, uncooked
3 large cans of tomato juice
2 large cans of chili beans or light red kidney beans
1 lb of tiny pasta (ABCs or Acini di pepe–see note below)
chili powder
cumin
beef base
minced onion (or large whole onion, diced finely and cooked until translucent)
garlic powder
oregano
1. Put the 5 lbs of ground beef into a huge crock pot and turn on high.
2. Cook for one hour on high; remove lid and break up/stir with potato masher or other implement you usually use to break up ground meat as it cooks.
3. Cook on low for two more hours (stir once or twice).
4. Drain grease from crock pot/meat thoroughly and put meat back in crock pot.
5. Stir in other ingredients. May need water to finish filling it up–just add more beef base if you use water.
6. Spices–I usually use a lot of chili powder and minced onion; a little of the others; and a TBSP or two of beef base. (The beef base takes away the tomato-y taste/bitter taste that chili can sometimes have. If it still has this, I will add a tsp of sugar or Splenda too.)
7. Either cook now on high for an hour and low for three or four hours or stick crock insert in fridge until you are ready and cook for 90 mins on high then three or four hours on low.
Note about pasta: Cooking foods with pasta in them in the crock pot yields two potential problems for me–1. The pasta doesn’t get done, so I often precook it; 2. If I precook it, or the dish cooks in the crock pot for a long time, the pasta swells up and gets grainy. My family likes pasta in their chili, so I switched to these tiny pastas that do not require precooking but do not swell up so big either. They were a hit!
by Donna | Jan 23, 2013
On Wednesdays, I usually use my crock pot for lunch–regardless of whether it is a true crock pot recipe or not. If it’s not a genuine crock pot dish, I simply assemble all of the ingredients on Tuesday in the crock (with all precooking done ahead of time) and turn the crock on high for an hour then on low until, oh, say 9:00, when my thirty-year-old son who co-teaches with me all day starts to dig into it during class breaks. (I really have “crock pot Wednesday” for him as he adores soups and stews. As a matter of fact, when he was in college and that whole “Got milk?” thing was so popular, I had a t-shirt especially made for him with a steaming bowl of soup in the middle and the words “Got soup?” embroidered on it.)
Today’s crock pot recipe isn’t really a crock pot recipe. It came from a cookbook that a dear friend got me for Christmas: Homestyle in a Hurry (by Gooseberry Patch). But I precooked everything yesterday and threw it in the crock, stuck in the fridge, and got it out and “cooked” as described above. I guess in that way, everything becomes a crock pot meal on Wednesdays! (I teach forty students in four different classes in our cottage class service in our home on Wednesdays, and I can’t watch a boiling pot, so the crock pot is my answer!)
So…here it goes…my revised, um, non-crock pot, slightly changed (always!) Kielbasa Chowder:
1/2 cup butter
1 huge onion, diced finely
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp allspice (I used “Mural of Flavor”)
4 huge potatoes, diced and cooked
6 cups chicken broth
2 quarts half and half
1 (14 oz) packages of frozen yellow corn
1 (14 oz) can shoepeg corn, undrained
2 (14 oz) packages Kielbasa sausage, cut into rounds then in halves (bite sized pieces)
1. Melt butter in small pan over medium high heat.
2. Stir in onions, sprinkle with seasonings, and cook until dark and carmelized, about eight minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Toss everything above into the crock pot except for the broth and half and half. Put crock in fridge overnight.
4. The next morning, get it out and add the broth and half and half. (Sometimes I will heat the ingredients I’m adding to make it heat up faster. Occasionally, I will even stick the whole crock in the micro and speed up the heat through process, then transfer to the crock base.)
5. Heat in crock on high for one hour then turn down on low until heated through/flavors are mixed, about five or six hours.
Serves 12 to 16 people–or four teen/young adult guys!
Note: The real recipe says to just combine the onions, potatoes, corn, and half and half. Divide that in two and process half of it in the food processor. I just used my old fashioned hand-held potato masher to thicken/mash up some of the ingredients.Because I skipped this step and because I put my mixture into the crock pot instead of cooking down on the stove top, I had to further thicken this soup by stirring in mashed potato flakes (my thickener of choice near the end of cooking for many soups and stews!) and microwaving the crock insert (love those removable crocks!) for several minutes uncovered.
