Slow cooker recipes and commentary

[nanila]

This is my list for keeping track of the recipes I try out from my slow cooker Christmas present recipe books. We'll see how long I can keep this up next year once I'm not on holiday!

BBC goodfood "Slow Cooker Favourites"
NB: This book is a little annoying because quite a few of the recipes only seem to involve the slow cooker as an afterthought and suggest a considerable amount of prep either prior to, or after, putting the ingredients in the slow cooker. I plan to largely ignore such instructions so my versions of these are going to be modified.

Recipes tried:

• Better-than-baked beans, p. 10. Made on 26 December 2021. This called for cooking most of the short ingredient list in a pan on the hob before putting it in the slow cooker, which I found ridiculous, so I just browned the onions and bacon and dumped everything else in straight from the can/chopping board. Made it with butter beans, ate it for breakfast with fresh bread. It was great. Next time I will crumble in the stock cube instead of dissolving it in 200 mL of water, to make the sauce thicker.
• Herby bean-sausage stew, p. 22. Made on 08 January 2022. This was a very simple recipe so I added some stuff to it, including a crumbled stock cube, garlic granules, thyme, salt and pepper (!!), and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. I suspect it would have been quite bland otherwise as the only herbs were basil and oregano. It was pretty tasty. Humuhumu ate one of the chipolatas as well, which I count as a win because normally she won't touch anything that's been in homemade tomato sauce. 
• Goulash in a dash, p. 112. Made on 10 January 2022. This was awesome. I had no potatoes and a larger quantity of stewing beef than the recipe called for, so while I mostly followed the ingredient list, I deviated on quantities. I also added caraway seeds, chilli powder and a spoonful of corn flour on the advice of a different recipe. Served with couscous. Keiki yummed it up, as did the adults. 
• Big batch bolognese, p. 80. Made on 13 January 2022. Left out the bacon, mushrooms and glass of red wine (dry January), and two-thirds'd the recipe because of the amount of mince we had to hand. It was really good, we ate it over rice rather than pasta.
• One-pan chicken couscous, p. 46. Made on 23 January 2022. I tripled this recipe because I had 700g of chicken. This meant using 3 tablespoons of smoked harissa paste, which felt like a lot and as turned out, was. It was very spicy and even the bloke needed to add buttermilk to it when eating it. I didn't add the couscous directly to the slow cooker as the children would never have eaten that if I did. Very tasty though, will make this again. Possibly with a little less harissa paste, and a tub of natural yoghurt for serving, so we don't have to use the buttermilk that we normally keep on hand for soda bread.

Recipe planning:

• Spiced carrot & lentil soup, p. 26.
• Mexican chicken stew, p. 48.
• Five-a-day tagine, p. 144.

Miss South "Slow Cooked"
Miss South takes the view that most prep is unnecessary apart from caramelising onions or garlic. She is also very keen on using the cheapest  ingredients, especially meat, because everything gets tender in the slow cooker, and takes the trouble to describe where it should be possible to obtain those ingredients. She's fortunate enough to live in London where she can easily acquire unusual ingredients, herbs, and spices, but recognises that not everyone does and suggests alternatives. I like this positioning.

Recipes tried:

• Macaroni Cheese, p.107. Made on 27 December 2021 and 15 January 2022. This was really good. Even Humuhumu liked it without dumping an inordinate quantity of ketchup on it, and it involves mustard powder and white pepper. She asked me what was in it and I told her I had made it "as simply as possible". (Muahaha) It calls for evaporated milk, which I didn't have, so I substituted double cream that was left over from making Christmas trifle and that was fine. I also love that it didn't require doing anything to the 500g of dried macaroni other than coating it in corn flour prior to putting it in the slow cooker. The crunchy bits at the bottom of the cooker went down well with Keiki and me. I may butter the slow cooker next time as it did require some elbow grease to remove.
• Tarka Dal, p 102. Made on 03 January 2022. This is AWESOME (capslock fully merited). I doubled the recipe apart from the caramelised onions (I used 2 instead of 4), and I didn't have fenugreek seeds so I used ground fenugreek and didn't double the amount of that either. It was absolutely delicious and I will make this regularly. Additional: I'm finding that I don't seem to have to cook things for nearly as long as Miss South recommends. She said to put the slow cooker on high for 8 hours. I put mine on low for 5.5 hours and that was plenty. I turned it off and let it sit (another 2 hours) until dinner time, and it was just the right temperature for eating with fresh basmati rice and steamed mangetout. Perhaps I have an overpowered slow cooker?
• Spiced Carrot and Parsnip Soup  p. 151. Made on 16 January 2022. I'm not very enamoured of this. It is quite a healthy recipe. Possibly too healthy. It needed a lot of salt to make it palatable (to me, anyway), and I ended up dumping in the leftover sauce from making chicken adobo, which gave it chicken fat, soy sauce, and sesame oil, all of which helped. It was a little weird, ultimately, as the adobo flavours didn't quite match the Indian spices from the recipe, but at least I enjoyed eating it. I won't make this again. 
• Saag Aloo, p. 180. Made on 22 January 2022. This was so easy, I actually bothered to caramelise the onions, just because I like caramelised onions. The recipe didn't call for this. I didn't add the grated coconut because I didn't have any (!) but I did add a leftover half of an avocado. It's super tasty, but this is the second of Miss South's recipes that would benefit from a good deal more salt. I didn't add it to the pot directly this time but sprinkled it on top in the form of adjika spice mix.

Recipe planning:

• French onion soup, p. 142.
• Cuban style black beans, p. 88.

My recipes

• My usual chilli. Made on 04 January 2022. This consist of browning a 500g packet of mince (either beef or vegetarian depending on what I have to hand) in a pan on the hob, then dumping it into the slow cooker with the following. I use a teaspoon to scoop out the spices from their jars but I would hesitate to be accurate about the actual quantities.
  • • 1 tin chopped tomatoes (400g)
    • several squeezes of tomato paste
    • 1 tin kidney beans, drained (400g)
    • 1 onion, finely chopped
    • 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
    • 1 spoonful dark muscovado sugar
    • 2 stock cubes
    • dried oregano
    • herbes de provence
    • ground cumin
    • ground coriander
    • ground cinnamon
    • chilli powder (chipotle or hot)
    • smoked paprika
    • bay leaf
    • pepper & salt

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