Slow Cooker Cowboy Beans Recipe

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! We had a lovely weekend away at my father-in-law's cabin---it was very relaxing. Now we're home in the real world where there is laundry to fold, floors to mop, and dinner to prepare.

Although summer is prime grilling time, I really like to plug in the slow cooker for hassle-free side dishes on the nights we grill. I made cowboy beans last week, and although we ended up eating them as a main course, they would taste fantastic alongside a barbecued burger, steak, or chicken leg.

We don't have a fancy tent-trailer thing for camping, but if we did, we'd definitely bring the slow cooker along the way Mir does for a lovely pot of beans at the end of a packed day of hiking and fishing.

The difference between Cowboy Beans and a traditional chili is the twangy flavor that comes from the Worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar. The more you add, the twangier it becomes. mmm.

The Ingredients.

1 pound dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 pound lean ground beef or turkey (optional)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1-2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins, made in the USA is gluten free)
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 (10-ounce) can Rotel, or traditional chopped tomatoes, your choice
1-2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
7 cups water
sliced jalapenos, optional

The Directions.

Serves 8-10 as a side dish, or 5 as a main course. Sort pinto beans, and soak overnight in lots of fresh water. If you live in a climate where the house gets terribly hot overnight, put the beans in the refrigerator to soak to keep icky bacteria from accumulating.

In the morning, drain your beans, and pick out any that have split open, or look discolored and shrively.

Pour into a 6 quart slow cooker. Brown hamburger and onion on the stove, and drain fat. While the meat is cooking, add the rest of the ingredients into your slow cooker. Start with 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar. Add the meat, and top with 7 cups of fresh water. Stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours, or on high for about 6. My beans took 6 hours on high to tenderize, and then they sat on warm for another 3 hours. We're at sea level. If you live in a higher altitude, your beans will take longer to soften.

Taste the beans. If you'd like your beans to have more of a tang, add some more Worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar. Top with sliced jalapenos, if desired.

The Verdict.

We all liked these beans a lot. I did add a bit more Worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar, and the tang was pleasantly pronounced. I also liked how the Worcestershire sauce added a dark color to the broth. The kids doctored their bowls with lots of shredded cheese and sour cream. I had a bowl for lunch the next day alongside an In N' Out cheeseburger. It was a wonderful meal.
I get a kick at how the white dots on pinto beans completely disappear after cooking. You can't even find one!

if you'd like some more slow cooker side dishes for your next cookout:

corn on the cob
creamed corn
baked potatoes
sweet potatoes with chili, cumin, and lime
Boston baked beans

What I've Been Slow Cooking

I have been slow cooking.

Daily.

Baby #3 is due to arrive this upcoming January, and we all couldn't be more thrilled.

Now that the all-day-every-single-day-why-won't-it-let-up-seriously-why-won't-it sickness has practically subsided life can get back to normal around here.


I should have put the word normal in quotes.

Make it Fast, Cook it Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking

I finished it.

and it's oh so very pretty.

Thank you so much to each and every single one of you for all of your help, encouragement, and hand-holding.

I'm going to take a nap now.

coming to bookstores in October, but now available for pre-order on Amazon.

updated 7/6 to answer a few questions: All of the recipes in the book are gluten-free, but my notes are easy to ignore for those who don't need to worry about gluten intolerance.
Gluten is found in wheat, barley, and rye.
xoxo steph

Slow Cooker Baked Potato Soup Recipe

During my call for recipes, I got emails from Jennifer, Jenny, Jenny Y., Julie, and Charlotte asking if I had made a baked potato soup in the slow cooker. I had not. I did make a potato-leek soup last year, but that's not really the same thing. It's definitely healthier, though!

Panera bakery evidently has a very good baked potato soup, but I've never stepped foot into a Panera, so I hadn't had their soup as a reference. So I googled it, and found a copycat recipe on RecipeZaar and adapted it to fit our family.

We all really liked this soup---the kids ate a ton, and we have a bunch leftover. I made a big batch so we'd have leftovers in the freezer. I'd guess this serves 10.

The Ingredients.

--5 lbs potatoes, peeled and diced in 1 to 2-inch chunks
--1 teeny onion, diced
--4 cloves garlic, minced
--1 teaspoon seasoned salt
--1/2 teaspoon black pepper
--1/2 teaspoon red pepper
--2 quarts chicken broth
--2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, to add at the end
--crumbled bacon and green onion or chives as garnish (optional)

The Directions.

Use a 6 quart or larger slow cooker. Peel and dice the potatoes, and put them into the stoneware. Add onion and garlic. Sprinkle in the seasonings, and pour in the broth. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 4. The potatoes should be fork-tender. You can use a potato masher to mash the potatoes in the soup, or a hand-held immersible blender. I suppose you can also leave the potatoes in chunks, if you really wanted, but I wanted a smooth soup.

After smashing the potatoes, crumble in both packages of cream cheese, and put the lid back on. Cook on high for about 30 minutes, or until the cream cheese is completely dissolved. Stir a few times during the 30 minutes.

Garnish with crumbled bacon, green onion or chives, and I'd assume cheddar cheese would be just delightful.

The Verdict.

When I first started hanging out on the internet, I was surprised at how much bacon talk there was. Everywhere I turned (clicked), it seemed there was somebody else going on and on and on some more about their love for bacon. Since I don't eat pork, I really didn't get it, and just figured it was a weird internet thing.

But yesterday I figured out the secret to really good turkey bacon. Fry it in a ton of butter. Now I think I might sort of get it. Although I'm not terribly pleased with how messy it is....

anyhow, this is a fantastic soup, and the bacon on top really seals the deal. My kids both ate a bowl when it was first finished around 4pm, and another later in the evening.

We're going to have BLT's with the leftover bacon for lunch. or maybe breakfast. I'm excited.

other great soups:

Jamaican Pumpkin
Thai Coconut
Corn Chowder
Harvest Stew
French Onion

Slow Cooker Turkey Tetrazzini Recipe

Sharon emailed me last week and said that she had a hanker'n for some Turkey Tetrazzini a la Slow Cooker. I didn't know that I had a hanker'n until I read her email and the recipes she linked for me to look at.
But I did. I seemed to have had a hanker'n. She sent links to Epicurious, AllRecipes, and Food Network.

After reading through the recipes, I wrote one of my own to work with the slow cooker. It worked, eventually. I at first didn't include enough pasta, so my tetrazzini was more like wallpaper paste than a creamy pasta dish. This was easily fixed, however, and the end result was a nice comforting meal we enjoyed on an unseasonably chilly night.

Thank you, Sharon!

The Ingredients.

1 (16-ounce package) dry spaghetti noodles (maybe divided. Please read the entire recipe and decide for yourself how you'd like to proceed!) I used brown rice noodles from TJ's.
1-2 pounds turkey breast tenders, cut in small chunks
5 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 small onion, diced
1 (14.5-ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 (8-ounce) block cream cheese, chunked
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
2 cups chicken broth (check for gluten!)
salt to taste at the table

The Directions.

Use a 5-6 quart slow cooker, and spray the inside well with cooking spray.

What I did: I initially used a half-package of spaghetti noodles, and broke them in half, and laid them on the bottom of the stoneware. I then layered the other ingredients on top, in the order I typed up above. But! after cooking on low for 3 hours, I noticed that the noodles pretty much disappeared, so I cooked the remainder of the package on the stovetop in heavily salted water (super-heavily salted, the top of the container fell off!) until barely al dente, then stirred the drained pasta into the slow cooker.

I then cooked on low for only one more hour, then clicked it to warm for another 3. The turkey was fully cooked, the noodles were perfect, but the onion that I didn't cut fine enough had still a bit of a crunch.

The Verdict.

So. My dilemma is in deciding if it would have been better to put the entire package of pasta into the machine and then layer the ingredients in and cook on low for 3-5 hours (not high!) or if it is better to leave all the pasta out, and just cook it on the stove, then mix it in.
Or, do what I did.
I just don't know.

I do know that this worked, but it certainly wasn't a very hands-off meal. And we ate it, even the leftovers for lunch the next day (the onion was soft by then!)

other pasta dishes that work well:

traditional lasagna
buffalo chicken lasagna
macaroni and cheese
ziti

Sweet Potato Chili (vegan!) Slow Cooker Recipe

I made a *darn* good chili last week, if I do say so myself (and I do. So does the rest of the family, including my parents). I had a few sweet potatoes left in the house and I desperately wanted to make up for the absolute fiasco that took place when I threw together that icky chicken and sweet potato I-don't-know-what-I-was-thinking dish.

This was much better. So much better, I demonstrated it on BlogHer's new webShow, The Juice. You can see the video by clicking here.

This is a cheap, vegan meal that doesn't leave you hungry 15 minutes later. I promise.

The Ingredients.

2 sweet potatoes, peeled and in 2-inch chunks
1 yellow onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (15-ounce) can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (or 2/3 cup dried beans, soaked overnight and boiled briskly for 10 minutes because of the freaky red bean toxin thing)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 (14.5-ounce) can tomatoes (whatever's on sale, mine had oregano and roasted garlic)
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon chipotle chili powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup water
1/2 cup orange juice (not pictured. If you don't have any in the house, use water)

The Directions.

Use a 5-6 quart slow cooker. This is enough food to feed a family of 4 regular-sized, or 6 smallish people. Peel and chunk the sweet potato and add to the pot. Add diced onion. Follow with the red bell pepper, can of tomatoes, garlic, and seasonings. Pour in OJ and water. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until the onion is translucent and the sweet potato is fork-tender (if you want the sweet potato to get really squishy and disappear when stirred, cook longer).

The Verdict.

Super tasty. I loved the sweet smoky flavor this had, and was thrilled at the depth of flavor that came from this spice combination. The sweet potato and beans were plenty filling, and Adam didn't once mumble that he'd really like a steak. My kids ate it, but un-veganized it by adding shredded cheese and sour cream.
I will definitely make this again. Thank you so much to BlogHer and to Tropicana for the fun day of filming for The Juice production. I had an absolute ball, and am touched to have been included. Thank you.

other great chili dishes:

traditional chili
poor man's chili
clean-out-the-pantry chili
white chili
presidential (Barack Obama's) chili

Slow Cooker Asian Shredded Beef Recipe

Thank you so much for responding to my Call for Recipes with so many wonderful choices! I've spent the last week reading them all and finding ways to incorporate many into our upcoming meal plans. This meal comes from Christin who got it from Cooking Light's 2007 list of annual recipes. It originally was made with pork, and called for sesame oil, minced garlic, and minced ginger. I thought we had sesame oil in the house, but I must have tossed it during the last refrigerator-clean-out and didn't feel like spending the time mincing garlic or ginger, and opted to use powdered garlic and upped the Chinese 5 spice powder to make up for the ginger. I also added a bit more honey (because we like it!)

I also used a 4 pound roast, and Cooking Light used a 2-3 pound roast. We really liked the results. Thank you, Christin!

The Ingredients.

4 pounds boneless beef or pork roast
1/2 cup gluten free soy sauce
1/2 cup gluten free hoisin sauce
6 tablespoons ketchup
6 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons Chinese 5-spice powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder (or 6 cloves, minced)

The Directions.

Use a 5 quart slow cooker. Trim any visible fat from the meat, and plop it into your stoneware. My meat was fresh, but it's okay if your meat is still frozen. Sprinkle the dried spices directly onto the meat, and top with the ketchup and honey. Pour in the soy and hoisin sauces. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours, or until meat shreds easily with a fork. You may need to take the meat out and cut in chunks after 8 hours, then turn to high for an hour or so to get it to shred nicely (I did this).

Serve over white or brown basmati rice, or over shredded cabbage. I used the cabbage, and we all liked it. The cabbage provided a bit of a crunch at first, but then got warm and soggy with the sauce. I liked it better when it was soggy---if I was making this just for myself, I'd pour the bag of cabbage into the pot to get it wilty, but the rest of the family prefers the crunch.

The Verdict.

We all really liked this meal. The kids ate a ton of the beef, and continued to eat cold pieces later in the night after dinner. This makes a lot of food--we've got about half leftover that I'm looking forward to eating for lunch during the holiday weekend. The meat reminded me A LOT of mu-shu beef---I'd imagine it would be delicious wrapped in the little pancakes with some plum sauce (although Adam quickly pointed out that I haven't had Mu-Shu anything for about 6 years, so I could be way off base. I still think it'd be good wrapped in those pancakes...).

The original name that Cooking Light gave the meat was Char Siu, which means barbecued meat (usually pork). The meat didn't taste like it had a barbecued flavor to me, but instead was slightly sweet and tangy. I'd love to throw in some hot peppers next time to give a bit of heat.

Thank you again, Christin, and to all who submitted recipes. I'm excited!

other great Asian-inspired meat dishes:

Korean Ribs
Mongolian Beef
Thai Curry
Lamb Vindaloo
Broccoli Beef
Peking Duck