Crock Pot Wednesday– Crock Pot Lasagna
Power Hour: Introducing Our “Four to Six Freezer Foods in an Hour” Program
Watch our blog (and FB page) for our new summer series, “Power Hour,” in which we will share recipes (with varying amounts and numbers of servings) that you can make in an hour (or less with some young helpers!) and make four to six (or more if making for three or four people) freezer entrees.
If you have always wanted to try freezer cooking, but an entire program of one whole day (or week!) of cooking feels overwhelming to you, our “Power Hour” might be just the thing to get you over the fear of freezer cooking!
Think your family won’t like the foods? I have been freezer cooking for twenty-three years this summer, and while I have definitely evolved as a freezer cook, I have hundreds of recipes that my family loves–and not just layered or bagged casseroles either! Some of our favorites that I will be sharing with you include potato casserole, braised beef cube mix, meatloaves, meatballs, sausage rice stir fry, parmesan chicken breasts, poor man’s steak, spaghetti pie, meats for stir fries and fajitas, and much more. And you can do each one in under an hour!
We’ll post our first one the week of June 9th, so stay “posted”! 🙂 And share with your friends!
Crock Pot Wednesday–Sausage, Potatoes, and Beans
“Uncooked” ready to turn on high. (I precook and assemble the night before, stick in fridge, then pull out and cook the next day.) |
Easy peasy crock pot meal today!!!
I have a HUGE crock pot. It is actually an amazing one that has three sizes of inserts, so you can do super large, kind of big, and smaller {for dips, small roasts, etc.}.
My favorite crock pot– https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?sku=14764453&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CPrx5-DOs7UCFQ84nAodPUUABw
Ingredients–sort of
4 lbs of turkey, skinless kielbasa sausage, cut into rounds
4 lbs of potatoes, peeled and cubed approximately the same size as sausage rounds
2 lbs of frozen green beans
1 or 2 large onions, cut into chunks (I like to stir fry them before adding them.)
pork/smokehouse/ham base (to make “broth”)
Forward (Penzy spice)
Garlic and herb seasoning
basil
black pepper
1. Precook potatoes by steaming in micro or boiling on stove top. (I like to precook my potatoes if I am making a dish where the other ingredients are nearly cooked or fully cooked.)
2. Mix all spices into 3 cups of hot water. Use the amount of base you like for your “broth.”
3. Toss half of the meat and veggies into the crock pot and pour half of the liquid over.
4. Toss second half of the meat and veggies into the crock pot and pour rest of liquid over.
5. Cook–since mine needs to be done in three or four hours, I put it on high for an hour and low for two. You could put it on low for a long time. My crock pot has a WARM setting, so I move into that fairly quickly.
Note: If you do not have the largest crock pot, cut this in half! It makes a full large crock!
Crock Pot Wednesday–Low Maintenance Chili
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!