Quick dinner recipes for busy people!

Earlier this week in Part 1, I gave you some tips on getting started with a crock pot.  Now, before you begin to lick your lips, here are a few basic tips about how and what to cook in your crock pot.

First, there are crock pot cookbooks on the market (here are some of the better ones).  They turn some of your favorite oven recipes into crock pot sensations.   You’ll also find great recipes here on my blog (yes, that was a shameless plug!), as well as others such as Crock Pot Meals.  You’ll quickly realize that dishes you may never thought of cooking in a crock pot can be prepared without you even being there.  As Melanie discovered after reading my latest post on Russian Chicken, you can make a lot more than just stew in your crock pot!

What you’ve got to remember when cooking anything in a crock pot is the liquid component.  There must be some type of liquid in the bottom of the cooker to begin the cooking process. Without it, your food will just cook on the bottom and burn.  There doesn’t need to be a lot of it, just enough to cover the bottom in most cases.  The juices within the meat will mix with the other liquid during cooking to create more of a stock.

When using a crock pot it should be at least half full for maximum cooking potential.  Remember that the more food you add to the pot, the slower it will cook.  However, your food will cook evenly without overcooking as long as the temperature is adjusted correctly.  If you aren’t careful and don’t set the crock pot heat settings right, you may find that an eight hour setting cooked your dinner in two and spent the other six drying it out.  Like I suggested in Part 1, you should test out a new crock pot on a weekend (when you will be home all day to keep an eye on it) and learn how long a meal takes to cook at a given temperature setting.

Meats are the most common foods cooked in a crock pot.  Since meat will take the longest to cook of any of your ingredients, it should make up the bottom layer.  This will also help keep the meat moist since the liquids and other ingredients will be layered above.  For safety, cook meat at least three hours to ensure that it is cooked all the way through.   This isn’t usually a problem, since most people use the crock pot at its lowest setting (six to ten hours depending on the brand of cooker).   However, you shouldn’t cook a whole chickens in a crock pot.   The internal temperature needed to safely cook that much chicken properly usually can’t be reached in time for eating at such low temperature settings.

Vegetables work great in a crock pot as well.  Tough fibrous veggies like carrots and potatoes can be tossed in at the beginning with the meat.  It takes longer for the fibers to be broken down and the vegetables to be cooked all the way through.  More delicate vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms should be added half an hour before the meal is done.

A crock pot makes dinner quick and easy when you’re on the run.   These tips should have you up and running with your crock pot in no time!

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Now that it’s officially winter, it’s the perfect time to curl up up with a bowl of soup!  No, I don’t just mean opening a can of soup either.  I’ve found a great soup recipe that is quick, easy, and delicious at Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s.  Their site has tons of great recipes that feature products from Trader Joe’s.  Don’t worry though, you can find the ingredients for this soup at any grocery store.  You’ll need:

• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1 clove crushed garlic or 1 tsp jarred crushed garlic
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 (15-oz) cans black beans (do not drain)
• 1 cup chunky salsa
• 2 Tbsp lime juice (juice of 1 lime)
• Sour cream
• 1/2 lb of browned ground beef (optional – this is an addition of my own to the recipe)

In a medium pot, sauté the onions in olive oil until they are soft and translucent.   Sprinkle in the cumin and garlic and sauté it all for another minute.  Now pour in the black beans (including the juices), salsa, and lime.  (Here is where I added in a half pound of browned ground beef.  I enjoy meaty soups, but feel free to leave out the meat if you’d like)  Stir it all together and simmer covered for 20 minutes.
Ladle the soup into individual bowls and top it off with a dollop of sour cream.  Tortilla chips go nicely on the side.  Total cooking time should be about 30 minutes, and it should serve 4-6 people.

Enjoy!

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I recently posted about one of my favorite recipes, Russian Chicken.  If you haven’t tried it, you should – it’s a delicious and easy recipe for the crock pot (a.k.a. a slow cooker).  A crock pot is a great way to make dinner, and I’ve got a few other great recipes for the crock pot to share.  So, this seems great opportunity to feature a series on crock pot basics.

If you have a crazy schedule like I do, a good home-cooked meal can be hard to come by.  Enter the crock pot. Now, I bet some of you are thinking, “There’s nothing quick about a crock pot.”  Well, true, it might take all day to cook a meal in a crock.  But, if you spend a few minutes loading it with the ingredients before you head out for work in the morning, your dinner will be ready to eat by the time you get home.  It doesn’t get and quicker or easier than that!

Now, if you are considering using a crock pot (and I obviously suggest that you do), there are a few things you should know before you start.  Trust me, even a crock pot meal can be horrible if you don’t follow a few basic tips.  No one wants to come home with a hearty appetite and find a pot full of mush.  Yuck!

So, let’s start with buying a crock pot. You can buy crock pots in various sizes, from as small as one quart to as large as five quarts.  If you come across a larger one, that’s even better.  Depending on your family size or the amount of people you’ll be cooking for, you may find the larger the crock pot the better it will work.  Mine is a 3.5 quart model, and it has worked just fine for anything I’ve tried so far.

Some crock pots also come with removable inner pots.   A removable inner pot allows everyone to sit and relax as they spoon their food onto the plate instead of standing in the kitchen, but the best perk to a removable inner pot is that it makes it so much easier to clean when you’re done!  You can let the pot soak in the sink or tip it on its side to give it a good scrubbing if you need to.  Do yourself a favor and don’t even think about buying a crock pot without a removable inner pot!

Temperature settings vary among crock pots.  Many offer a range of temperature settings, while some have as little at two setting (high and low). There may also be a warm setting, which comes in handy if you want to keep things warm while you whip up a few side dishes.  I’ve gotten by just fine with my three-setting crock pot (warm, low, and high), so don’t feel like you must spend extra to get a crock pot with tons of settings.

Be careful with your heat settings, however.  As with ovens, temperatures and settings on the dial are a rough estimate.  Don’t be like me who, at the expense of my meal, overcooked a roast the first time.  Even though I had it set to the eight hour setting to cook throughout the day, my crock pot has a high temperature and cooks boneless meats pretty quickly.  I could have put it in the crock pot when I got home and still had a delicious meal in less than two hours.

Just goes to show, you live and you learn.  To avoid such a food crisis, test your crock pot out on the weekend when you’re at home.  Start a meal in the late morning hours, using the lowest setting and see how long it actually takes for the meal to cook.  You may need to make adjustments to cooking times when you are away based on what you discover.   (Or, you could even break down and see what the manufacturer’s instructions have to say on this!)

Ok, now you should be ready to hit the stores and get a crock pot of your very own.  In the next part, I’ll give you some tips on what and how to cook in your new crock pot.

EDIT: Continue on with Part 2 here.

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I was over at Meal Planning Central and saw this list.  It made me chuckle, so I thought I’d share it with you guys…

You love good food, enjoy cooking, and know about a good restaurant or two, but should you consider yourself a Foodie?  What is a Foodie anyway?

From the urban dictionary:

“A person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation. A foodie is not necessarily a food snob, only enjoying delicacies and/or food items difficult to obtain and/or expensive foods; though, that is a variety of foodie.”

You may be a Foodie if:

• You have at least 6 different types of mustard in the fridge and that bright yellow stuff you find at the hot dog stand isn’t one of them.
• You have no idea what CSI is or stands for, but you can name any chef featured on the food network and Iron Chef is your evening TV entertainment of choice when you’re in the mood for action and suspense.
• Given the choice, you’d much rather spend the day with Anthony Bourdain from No Reservations, than Anthony Hopkins or Marc Anthony.
• Three of your five speed dial options are the phone numbers of restaurants that require you to make a reservation.
• You spend more money on your set of kitchen knives than on your entertainment center.
• Your newly remodeled gourmet kitchen is worth more than the rest of your house.
• You named your daughters Julia and Rachel after two of your favorite female chefs.
• Your mother threatens to disown you if you mention the name Paula Dean one more time when you refer to her (your mom’s) food.  She got very upset when you suggested that Paula’s potato salad was much better than the one she makes (old family recipe).
• You can’t spell diaphanous, but you know exactly what a Durian is and more importantly how to eat it.
• You’d much rather spend $200 on a nice dinner than a new mp3 player.
• You have no idea how to get to the Empire State Building, but you have directions to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill Restaurant.

I hope you got a laugh out of that!  How many of those bullets apply to you??

Keep an eye out for more delicious quick dinner recipes posts coming soon!

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