Crockpot Beef Stew

While we're on our crockpot kick, I'd like to share with you a typical, heavy-rotation recipe we make about once a month in our home.

It's nothing spectacular or exotic--it's just a simple, hearty beef stew recipe. We've modified the original recipe by doubling the veggies and slightly reducing the amount of meat in order to make the dish more healthy and lower in fat. You might want to tweak things one way or another depending on your own preferences.

Like most crockpot recipes, it's easy, inexpensive, and guaranteed to satisfy.

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Crockpot Beef Stew
(modified from the little recipe book that came with our crockpot)

1 to 2 lbs stew beef, cut into cubes

2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1/8 cup flour

Place the beef in the bottom of the crockpot (try to pick marbled meat with a decent amount of fat content; you can also coat the beef with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil if it’s lean meat). Then, drizzle the Worcestershire sauce on the beef, and then add the black pepper and paprika. Then shake in the 1/8 cup flour. Stir well.

Then, add to the crockpot:
1 1/2 cups of boiling water and 1 beef bouillon cube
1/2 cup red wine
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 bay leaf

Stir well, turn crockpot to the “high” setting, and cover.

Then add:
4-6 potatoes, cut into medium-to-large chunks
6-8 carrots, chopped coarsely
1-2 onions, chopped coarsely
2-3 celery stalks, chopped

Note: Be sure to place most of the carrots and potatoes in the crockpot first (on top of the meat) so that they're in or close to the broth. The onions and celery can cook just fine by steaming on top.

Set crockpot on high for 1 hour, then set to low for 4-5 hours, OR set crockpot on low for 9 hours. Serve with optional rice (or brown rice) if desired.
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Note that crockpot recipes typically give you two temperature settings to choose from: One setting will take a really long time to cook, the other setting will take an exorbitantly long time to cook. The shorter setting is perfect for weekends, when you're likely to want to get up late and laze around, and maybe get around to chucking everything in the pot by around noon or 1pm. This way dinner is ready by 5-6pm.

The longer setting is perfect for weekdays, especially if you have a job with long hours or if you have a tough commute. Chuck everything in the crockpot, drag yourself off to that job you can’t wait to retire from, and when you get home nine or ten hours later, dinner is ready and waiting for you!

* All photos courtesy of Laura L. Perrin.

The Crockpot: A Siren Call for Single People

This post was inspired by a good friend of ours who is single and wants to cook more food at home, but he finds himself worn down by the combination of long hours at a Wall Street job and a brutal commute to and from the office. As a result, he tends to find himself stuck picking up take-out dinners most nights each week.

But he bought a crockpot recently--and he's actually happily using it. Happily, because it solves one of the pernicious problems of being a single professional: it pretty much sucks to cook just for yourself.

Think about it: you just finished a long day at the office, then finished a long commute home. And now you have to make dinner from scratch? If you keep a sleep/wake schedule like many of my colleagues, you'll be sitting down for your homemade meal, oh, about fifteen minutes after it's time to go to bed.

Worse, the food preparation time is borne 100% by you. Sure, it’s great to be king when you have somebody to delegate prep work to. But what fun is it to delegate work to yourself?

No wonder take-out can seem so tantalizing when you’re a bachelor or bachelorette.

Which brings me back to the core concept that a crockpot is one of those rare cooking tools that is spectacularly worth owning, especially when you're cooking for one. Think of the cooking logistical problems that are solved by the crockpot:

1) It's easy to make meals in bulk that can be eaten all week long.

2) Sure there's some prep work, but it's usually pretty simple: cut a bunch of stuff up and chuck it in the pot. Set the dial and forget about it for the rest of the day.

3) Instead of having to cook after you get home from work, you can put the food in the crockpot in the morning before you leave. Set the dial on low. When you get home ten or eleven hours later, a healthy and inexpensive dinner is ready and waiting for you.

3) You can be a total novice cook and still make great meals. Crockpot recipes are generally easy and foolproof. And if you have a knack for cooking (but you just don't know it yet) this can be your entry point into more serious cooking down the road.

4) Finally, how much time does it take to microwave a dinner you've already cooked the other day? Sure, you might have to invest a bit of extra time making the recipe initially. But if you can microwave the leftovers a couple of more times that week, the aggregate time (and money for that matter) you've spent feeding yourself over three or four meals will be much less than making three or four separate daily trips to pick up take-out on your way home from work.

The crockpot isn't just for June Cleaver any more. It's the perfect tool for anybody--especially single people--who would like to look forward to a delicious, hot, home-cooked meal after a long day at the office.

I've put below a few helpful links, including a link to the exact crockpot model we have at home (at Amazon.com). Also see below for a post I wrote a few months ago that contains an extended list of crockpot recipe resources.

Related Posts:
Crockpot Recipes and Cooking Sites
The Crockpot: How I Admitted I Was Wrong in a Cooking Debate

Corned Beef and Cabbage

My wife and I aren't exactly Irish, but we both have siblings that married Irish people. So technically I guess that makes us Irish-in-laws.

But who's keeping track anyway? Irish or no, there's one dish I look forward to every year more than any other--Laura's corned beef and cabbage in the crockpot.

For most of the year we eat a pretty high-veggie, low-fat diet, and of course you've heard me rail against excess salt over and over again. But at this time of year--and fortunately it's only once a year--we pretty much abandon all restraint regarding both salt AND fat. Ah, sweet gluttony....

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Corned Beef and Cabbage
(The recipe below is a modified version from the recipe book that came with our crockpot)

6 carrots, cut into 3 inch pieces
3-4 lb corned beef brisket (you can trim some of the fat off, but good God, don't cut it all off!)
1 cup water

Put into crockpot and cook on high for 4 1/2 hours.

Then add:
4 potatoes, can be left unpeeled
1/2 head of cabbage cut into large wedges

Cook on high for an additional 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Note: If you're like me, and you want to include extra cabbage (meaning more than will fit into the crockpot itself), not to worry. You can cook it separately in a saucepan. Just wait until maybe 30 minutes before everything is done, take 1 to 1 1/2 cups of broth out of the crockpot, pour it over the remaining cabbage, and simmer in a covered saucepan for 20-30 minutes.

Crockpot Part Two: Recipes and Cooking Sites

There's been a quick (and fortunately positive...) response to my first crockpot post, so I'll follow up right away with some helpful resources for recipes, advice and crockpot product information. It's going to be a real crock-o-rama here today.

Of course anybody can type "crockpot" into a search bar on Yahoo or Google and see what turns up. But I've done my best to filter out any substandard sites where the recipes suck, or are too complicated, or whatever. Thus the sites I've listed below are ones that I've personally found particularly useful. If anybody has a site they'd like me to consider, please drop me a note in the comments section below.

List of Crockpot Resources:

1) Vegan recipes for the crockpot. The borscht looks particularly good by the way.

2) Here's a general crockpot recipe site that has a lot of promise, although let me apologize in advance for the rapid-blink banner ads. Two particular standout recipes here are the Garlic Lime Chicken and the Kona Chicken. Both are easy as heck and have a creative mix of ingredients. You can easily tell both are worth cooking.

3) CookingCache.com has an enormous (and I mean enormous) list of crockpot recipes... enough here for all possible tastes. But please don't make lasagna in your crockpot. That's just not right. The Cajun Red Beans and Rice has a lot of potential.

4) There are several very good recipes at Chefs.com. Search for "slow cooker" under Recipes. The Slow Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage is a must-try.

5) If you type "crockpot" into the search bars of Yahoo or Google, this site from About.com comes up near the top. Despite this, it's still incredibly useful. :) You'll find an enormous list of recipes, a list of recommended cookbooks for slow cookers, advice on adapting recipes for crockpot use, and lots of other useful advice, tips and FAQs on crockpots. There's even a "weekly recipe-in-an-email" option in there!

6) Here's a chicken cacciatore recipe that stood out from the pack.

7) Here’s an amazing pork tenderloin recipe, literally. Mmmmm.... pork tenderloin. A big self-conscious apology to any vegetarian or non-pork eating readers! This recipe is easy, fast and amazing-sounding. A keeper.

8) Finally, I found it particularly helpful to search on del.icio.us using the tag "crockpot"--the sites that turn up are for the most part excellent.

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Enjoy! And remember, sometimes life can be a crock!

The Crockpot: How I Admitted I Was Wrong in a Cooking Debate

This is a story about how I came around to my wife’s view on using a crockpot, and how I can be totally, egregiously wrong about things. Sometimes.

It dates back to when my wife was registering for gifts for our wedding. She mentioned to me that she wanted to get a crockpot.

“A crockpot! What the hell do we need a crockpot for?” I yowled ungrammatically. I was laughing out loud at all the 1950’s images rolling around in my mind: The grayish, boiled mystery meat, smushy vegetables, Marion Cunningham, June Cleaver, etc. You get the picture.

One of the ironies here is that I used to work on the housewares floor of a big (and now defunct) department store back when I was in college--that’s where I acquired a lot of my early knowledge about what kind of gear you need and don’t need in the kitchen. I errantly considered a crockpot to be on the “don’t need” list.

But I learned later that meals from a crockpot have enormous advantages for a busy cook. They tend to be simple and easy to make. There are very few crock pot recipes with more than one step. Just whip through the prep work (or outsource it), chuck everything into the pot, set it on low, and drag yourself off to that job you can't wait to retire from.

You can forget about it for the entire day, and when you come home, dinner is done and waiting for you. Note that this is a rare instance where you may bend my rule to stay near the kitchen.

If you’re looking for a good quality crockpot, I’d suggest the same brand that we have: Rival. If you click on the product link at the bottom of this post it will take you to one such crockpot on Amazon. Note that the word “crockpot” is actually a brand name owned by Rival, and products made by other manufacturers will usually be called “slow cookers.”

I wouldn’t bother with any of the annoying, fancy ones with zillions of settings. Just get one with a low, medium and high setting and keep it simple.

A couple of minor cautions about using crockpots: They take forever to heat up, so you can’t really lift up the lid and peer in at the food without costing yourself extra cooking time on the back end. Don't give into the temptation of looking in on the food while it simmers!

Also reheating food in the crockpot is a bit problematic. The crock itself is a brittle ceramic that under no circumstances can you heat on any direct heat source, like a stove. I learned this lesson the hard way and shattered one once… please don’t let me hear that you copied my mistake. You can’t really reheat it by turning on the crockpot itself because that can take an hour. And the high-walled ceramic dish doesn't work well in a microwave. So, you have to reheat your food the old fashioned way--by spooning it onto a plate and microwaving it.

There are literally TONS of recipes that are specifically designed for crockpot cooking, and I'll have a post coming up shortly with suggested sites to visit for recipe ideas.

Also when you buy your crockpot, be sure to look over the recipe book that comes along with it. We were surprised at how many good recipes there were in there. And finally, I've listed below one of our house favorites, chili, which can be made as spicy or as mild as your palate allows. It's a definite heavy rotation candidate!

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Crock Pot Chili:
(Borrowed and modified without permission from our friend Karen)

Add to crockpot:
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 8-ounce can tomato paste
2 14.5-ounce can kidney beans or pink beans
1 lb ground beef, browned and drained of fat
1 onion, chopped coarsely
1 green pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup water
3 Tablespoons mild chili powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne or chipotle pepper (can also add Tabasco sauce to taste)

Stir ingredients, cover crock pot and cook 10 hours on low or 5 hours on high. Can serve over white rice.

Serves 6.
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