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Start here => What's your crime? Basic Discussion => Topic started by: El on November 29, 2017, 06:32:50 AM

Title: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on November 29, 2017, 06:32:50 AM
Anyone have any tips for quick and easy crock pot recipes?  I actually have one this year (finally bought one after wanting one for several years- which seems silly in retrospect, they're cheap enough), and it's certainly the season for it. 

I know exactly one recipe, and while it's good (or I like it, anyway), prep is a little longer than I'd like.  (The recipe is to throw carrots, potatoes, celery and bullion in with a bunch of water.  My blood pressure is good- low, if anything- so the insane amount of sodium bullion adds isn't a problem for me.)

Hoping to be able to use mostly frozen or canned veggies because that makes prep a lot easier.  Hoping for tasty, nutritious, filling, and cheap.  Have no idea how food works.  Are there beans or legumes that go well with carrots, potatoes and celery?  Or would that just be terrible?

(Yes, I have the googles, but I can get a little lost just googling recipes... it's almost like cooking sites aren't geared towards people who fucking hate cooking or putting any effort into food prep.)
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: renaeden on November 29, 2017, 07:57:40 AM
Is it the same thing as a slow cooker? Because I have used one of those. I cooked chicken breast in there for ages then pulled it apart with a fork when it got stringy. Plus potatoes, carrots and celery went in there too. I don't know what bullion is.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on November 29, 2017, 08:35:04 AM
Is it the same thing as a slow cooker? Because I have used one of those. I cooked chicken breast in there for ages then pulled it apart with a fork when it got stringy. Plus potatoes, carrots and celery went in there too. I don't know what bullion is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouillon_(broth)

And yes, the same as a slow cooker.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Gopher Gary on November 29, 2017, 07:14:49 PM
I like eating crockpot food, because it always taste like a grandma made it. I just don't like smelling food cooking all day.  :dunno: Mom likes cooking beans in the crockpot, but they take a long time. I've only ever done things that take a long time, like corned beef and roasts, cook all day and then throw the veggies in at the end. I think I never used it much because I've just never been good at making sauces. There's a few companies now that make slow cooker sauces that only need veggies and meat tossed in. I haven't tried them though, because my bitches do all my cooking for me now so I don't have to worry about it anymore.  :zoinks:
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: renaeden on November 29, 2017, 08:30:58 PM
Right, the Australian version of bouillon is Oxo cubes in various flavours like chicken and beef. Or Maggi stock which is just powder (don't have to crumble it). And you're right - very salty.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Queen Victoria on November 30, 2017, 01:21:22 PM
Is it the same thing as a slow cooker? Because I have used one of those. I cooked chicken breast in there for ages then pulled it apart with a fork when it got stringy. Plus potatoes, carrots and celery went in there too. I don't know what bullion is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouillon_(broth)

And yes, the same as a slow cooker.

I thought I read years ago that one had the heating element in the bottom and the other in the sides.  Not sure which is which.  It might make a bit of a difference in the amoung of liquied to add to ensure even cooking.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Fun With Matches on November 30, 2017, 04:46:52 PM
I used to make beef and chicken stock from bones. I was told it was very strange to do this with bones, but it’s kinda ridiculous because they’re only bones and it’s not unusual to make stock from them. I roasted the bones, with bits of meat left on them, first for flavour, then put them in a crockpot with water for a couple of hours. Different paleo diet websites recommended cooking them for 4-6 hours at least, even days, to get the nutritious gelatin out of them. I do NOT recommend more than two hours, or it goes from smelling gorgeous to stinking the place out.

I used a recipe from a vegan website for self-saucing chocolate cake in a crockpot, but you wanted nutritious, so I’ll leave that out. :P
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Icequeen on November 30, 2017, 06:33:08 PM
I love mine, but SO does not do soup or anything with gravy...or some tomato sauces.

He's a total joy to cook for some days. His mother fried everything in bacon grease, oil, or oleo...I don't think he ate vegetables at all.  :zombiefuck:

I'm a lazy cook. Dump it in and forget it. Not a lot of real recipes.

I love to do pork and kraut with it, sear the pork roast on all sides, toss it in on top of some thinly sliced onion...I drain and rinse half the kraut because I don't like it too sour, add water if needed. Cook until it starts falling apart.

With beef roast, sear, toss it in there with some garlic, sliced onion, beef broth, baby carrots....or use about 1/2 jar of mild peperoncinis with the juice in place of the beef broth and omit the carrots if desired.

Diced ham, cubed potatoes, & fresh green beans, garlic, &  chicken broth.

Browned sausage, chicken broth, canned white beans, canned tomatoes (or omit), spinach, garlic. Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top when done.

Sausage or brats (browned), thin slices of green pepper and onion, garlic, and stewed tomatoes processed until saucy, can of sauce mixed in if too soupy or needs more.

Ham, chicken broth, carrots, white beans, onion, garlic, potatoes, diced tomatoes (if desired).

Beans work well in there, canned beans when your short on time, lentils. Be cautious with dried red kidney beans, they contain toxins that can make you really sick if not cooked right, I stick to canned with the slow cooker if I'm doing chili etc.

Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on November 30, 2017, 07:33:47 PM
I used a recipe from a vegan website for self-saucing chocolate cake in a crockpot, but you wanted nutritious, so I’ll leave that out. :P
I'm curious now.  (Legitly just curious- coudln't eat it anyway unless it's also gluten-free, in which case, as it's vegan, it would probably taste like garbage.)
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Lestat on November 30, 2017, 09:03:31 PM
Beef stew?

Chopped up lumps of steak, braising steak or frying steak works well enough but basically get as good as you can afford. General principle being what goes in, comes out, quality speaking. (before you eat it that is, afterwards all bets are off)

Kidney beans (canned is easier and safer but with a slow cooker, boil first to ensure the toxic haemagglutinin principle is destabilized. It is proteinaceous, a lectin toxalbumin like ricin, abrin, sea urchin venoms etc. only not likely to prove lethal, just most unpleasant, and will be denatured as a result, boil them and toss the water if using dried ones, canned, just drain them and chuck em in')

Canned chickpeas.

Fry the steak with some chopped onion and garlic, then make up a broth with a beef stock cube
 can of chopped tomato or two, depending on how many your cooking for, how much food your making, it helps add liquid, and with the stock you shouldn't need more.

Add some fried beef mince, and mushrooms. You CAN use the white Agaricus from the stores, but Shiitake work REALLY well. Much meatier and more flavourful rather than waxy and taste of naff all.

Now, heres where it gets tasty. Spices.

Couple of bay leaves, added during the slow cook, and fished out before eating.
Some worcestershire sauce, give it a splash or two, some dark soy sauce, a bit of tabasco to taste,
chilli peppers to taste. Black pepper, a good lot of pink peppercorns, pounded to bits (they have a lot of oil in them and powdering is difficult without a motorized spice grinder, although one is advisable for the mushroom portion of the spice mix), the latter if you aren't familiar with them, aren't hot, but have a camphoraceous but sweet taste. These, if you have neither spice grinder or mortar and pestle you can just lay out on a chopping board and use a mug like a steamroller, run the buggers over until they look like they've just gotten out of a car crash courtesy of car going off a cliff, squished up good to get the oils out to contribute to the flavour)
A few cubebs (these can be bought in good spice depts. in decent supermarkets), break the stalks off and chuck those [they look like black peppercorns with a stem, not hot, but an icy, cooling camphoraceous taste, perhaps 7-10 of the seeds, starting at the lower end first time you make it, you can over egg the pudding w/ these)

Szechuan pepper, ground if you can find it, got a weird numbing sort of sensation and a flavour I can't quite describe, these, the cubeb, the pink pepper help offset the fire of the hot peppers.

And lastly, you might only be able to find one, since they can be bought (through online stores catering for entheogens. You use only a little, a teaspoon or two, per pot of stew, so they cause no psychotropic effects, fly agaric mushroom. Amanita muscaria. When you buy them ready dried they are cured already, if you pick them you must cure them over a long, very slow heat, overnight, use the caps, the stems aren't worth having and dry minimum flame in the oven with the oven door propped open a tad, for the fluid expelled from the fresh mushrooms to escape when the heat drives it off. The heating is important for these, fresh, they are toxic although not fatal. Heating decarboxylates a neurotoxin, ibotenic acid, to muscimol, which in large amounts induces a type of hallucinogenic trance, a couple of teaspoons is all you need for cooking, less if its on say, a single steak, rather than a good number of grams to several caps depending on the content of ibotenic acid in the mushroom, which varies. The use in cooking has no such discernable effects. But it kind of draws out flavour in meat, like MSG does. And imparts a taste all of its own, its meaty and 'umami' as the japanese know such flavours, as with say, seaweeds, stock, shiitake mushroom, coupled with a distinct sweetness, honeyed almost but with a perculiar sweetness unique to these and perhaps a couple of closely related mushrooms. Red cap, white warts and rest of the mushroom is white, a ring, white spores, grows under silver birch. Sometimes under pine, forming a symbiosis with the tree host, providing sugars and other nutrients in return for a contribution of nutriment suited to the fungi through an intimately intertwined meeting of fungal hyphae and the finest of rootlets. Out of season, you can get them online through shops catering to psychoactive herbs though, as fly agaric/amanita muscaria. Don't forget the curing process if you pick your own (the family does contain some very, very dangerous relatives, but none of them have the bright scarlet cap of A.muscaria with its distinctive white warts on the cap. Albino strains exist but eat ye  not of these, the chance of your making a mistake exists, but they aren't common anyhow, bright red being de regeur, to orangey but still highly distinctive, any mushroom guide will feature these, along with their more distantly related relatives in the genus Amanita.  DON'T use the dark brown relative  of it with similar chemistry called the panther, Amanita pantherina.)

If you go picking, keep an eye out for a tan-capped mushroom, look up in the guidebooks for details, with ruddy, wide, oval shaped pores and a fiery taste, called Chalciporus piperatus, the peppery boletus. Those can be dried and powdered in a spice grinder (leathery texture so you need a grinder, unless you dice them by hand with scissors), they are parasitic on fly agaric when they grow up under silver birch trees. Spicy and quite hot, with a savor different to other hot spices, unique. The two mushrooms paired up go real well together for meat.

Chuck the fried steak, mince, onions in with the stock, canned tomato, add a bit of sun-dried tomato paste, and the drained kidney beans and chickpeas in, add the shiitake last, just before serving fry them in butter and about 5 minutes before dishing up, in they go, when the meat is nice and tender, just to give the shiitake time to soak up the flavour of the sauce and spices.

DEFINITELY not vegan, and you'll come back for more, too. Lovely on a cold winter night. Fly agaric helps ward off the cold too as a tea in larger, sub-intoxicant doses as an herbal medicine, as well as possessing a peculiarly stimulatory relaxant kind of effect when used thus. Little guys are quite versatile, I'd never allow my kitchen to go without a tub or two full, at least, to last out the rest of the year from one season to the next.

Its the keystone in my beef steak spice blend. If you pick them
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Fun With Matches on December 09, 2017, 01:31:31 PM
I used a recipe from a vegan website for self-saucing chocolate cake in a crockpot, but you wanted nutritious, so I’ll leave that out. :P
I'm curious now.  (Legitly just curious- coudln't eat it anyway unless it's also gluten-free, in which case, as it's vegan, it would probably taste like garbage.)

Thought I replied to this. Well, the recipe is here: https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2013/09/02/pudding-cake/

It can be made with GF flour I think. Vegan cakes are as tasty as dairy and egg ones. It’s only when it comes to bread that GF isn’t quite right, and a lot of those GF bread recipes and shopbought use egg.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on December 17, 2017, 09:51:21 AM
And now, I learn about food storeage.

According to the internet, I should probably throw away the food I made because it's spent too long at room temp (like a day and a half total, at least, and counting).  Considering re-heating it and eating it anyway.  It's just potatoes, some frozen veggies and some canned beans.  There's bouillon in there but no actual meat products.

I don't know why but that next step of moving the food into storeage is really intimidating.  I think in part because of lack of room in the fridge.  :/

There's just so many goddamn steps in cooking for oneself.  This is why I don't do it.  I don't know why the whole world seems to insist it's simple and easy.  *sigh*
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on December 17, 2017, 10:02:10 AM
If someone wants to talk me down, I'm going out for several hours before I return to the crock pot of death, so there's still time.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Jack on December 18, 2017, 01:31:37 AM
If someone wants to talk me down, I'm going out for several hours before I return to the crock pot of death, so there's still time.
Am making a crockpot veggie soup tomorrow for the vegan eldest; wish me luck. :laugh:
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on December 18, 2017, 10:30:39 AM
I boiled it again, had a bowl, threw the rest away.  I also didn't really like the composition of it that much in the first place- I tried to put too much stuff in it.

If someone wants to talk me down, I'm going out for several hours before I return to the crock pot of death, so there's still time.
Am making a crockpot veggie soup tomorrow for the vegan eldest; wish me luck. :laugh:
Luck!
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Pyraxis on December 18, 2017, 11:00:49 PM
I think in part because of lack of room in the fridge.  :/

Is the freezer just as full?

I know I'm too late to talk you down from anything, but I'm a huge fan of cooking big batches of things and freezing them into meal-sized portions to minimize the amount of cooking effort per result.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: El on December 19, 2017, 03:22:00 PM
I think in part because of lack of room in the fridge.  :/

Is the freezer just as full?
Yeah.

Quote
I know I'm too late to talk you down from anything, but I'm a huge fan of cooking big batches of things and freezing them into meal-sized portions to minimize the amount of cooking effort per result.
See... that still sounds like a lot of effort, to me.  :/
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Jack on December 19, 2017, 07:35:12 PM
I boiled it again, had a bowl, threw the rest away.  I also didn't really like the composition of it that much in the first place- I tried to put too much stuff in it.

If someone wants to talk me down, I'm going out for several hours before I return to the crock pot of death, so there's still time.
Am making a crockpot veggie soup tomorrow for the vegan eldest; wish me luck. :laugh:
Luck!
It turned out well. It was bland until she got home and added more seasoning, then it was awesome. :laugh:
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Calandale on December 19, 2017, 09:59:14 PM
And now, I learn about food storeage.

According to the internet, I should probably throw away the food I made because it's spent too long at room temp (like a day and a half total, at least, and counting).  Considering re-heating it and eating it anyway.  It's just potatoes, some frozen veggies and some canned beans.  There's bouillon in there but no actual meat products.



Oh good lord. Don't waste food. Most things are just fine at room temp for a couple days.


When I make a stew or something, I usually intentionally leave it out so it's easier to warm up
and to nibble on at will.


In terms of health, avoid dumpster diving on hot summer days, if possible. Otherwise, it's probably fine.
I've gotten sick off food twice - both times from the supermarket and eaten soon after shopping. Once
with some shrimp and once with some spinach (e-coli that time).
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Minister Of Silly Walks on December 20, 2017, 02:30:11 AM
And now, I learn about food storeage.

According to the internet, I should probably throw away the food I made because it's spent too long at room temp (like a day and a half total, at least, and counting).  Considering re-heating it and eating it anyway.  It's just potatoes, some frozen veggies and some canned beans.  There's bouillon in there but no actual meat products.


Oh good lord. Don't waste food. Most things are just fine at room temp for a couple days.


When I make a stew or something, I usually intentionally leave it out so it's easier to warm up
and to nibble on at will.


In terms of health, avoid dumpster diving on hot summer days, if possible. Otherwise, it's probably fine.
I've gotten sick off food twice - both times from the supermarket and eaten soon after shopping. Once
with some shrimp and once with some spinach (e-coli that time).

My wife leaves food out at room temperature for a few days - curries, casseroles, soups etc. Usually containing meat. Reheat once in the morning and once in the evening and we usually finish it before it smells too funky. Open the lid and have a look, if it looks back at you it's time to throw it out.

I'm not dead yet.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: renaeden on January 19, 2018, 11:43:43 PM
Maybe you could do a search on Facebook. My niece likes loads of sites featuring crock pot recipes and they all like to say how easy they are.
Title: Re: Crock Pot Recipes
Post by: Lestat on January 22, 2018, 01:48:01 PM
If its been left out for a day, a day and a bit, it isn't going to off you elle. You'd have to have started with food already contaminated with the bacterial toxins or organisms that were already present and not killed by cooking, which is pretty unlikely. Can't say I've any personal advice based on experience, because I've not got any to give, because I do not eat vegetables at all. But I've eaten enough meat stuff thats been out during the day and just nuked portionwise to make sure it is all good and hot enough to eat. I'm still alive, dishes have been based on varying combinations of meat, beef usually, pulses, usually kidney beans or chickpeas, or both. Along with mushrooms, although the latter rarely would be relevant in a species-specific way to those you are likely to eat, elle, only perhaps oyster and shiitake, perhaps shimeiiji or enokitake if you are adventurous and your supermarkets good. Or morels if they are really good, really, really, really good. But mostly they are ones I've gone and grubbed up out of the dirt, leaf litter etc., or hacked off trees with the knife I take out when hiking for just such mushroom-related tasks...digging them up, cutting them off, slicing bits of them to expose the flesh for chemical reagent application for field identification with chemical tests.

Anyhows, I am still here. I HAVE had food poisoning, but not from anything I've cooked...possibly once in my life, but I couldn't swear to that. Pretty sure that I've never poisoned myself. Not food poisoning at least. I did once have a real shitty time after eating a kind of mushroom, although the textbooks all say the egg-stage of them is edible, if poor eating. I knew exactly what I had collected and that the identification was correct. The books were wrong. Those little fuckers were NOT fit for food, and they made me very ill for a night. Spent all night puking and puking and puking and puking, out of both ends. Sometimes at the same time, which is really not an experience I'd suggest you try. (don't eat the egg-stage of Phallus impudicus, the stinkhorn, and I'd avoid the eggs of any of its related species either. You couldn't eat the adults if you wanted to, that would simply be physically impossible, because they give out an extraordinarily noxious stench, that is quite simply, fucking brutal. If a Phalloid mushroom is growing in the woods and you are taking a hike, then all you need to do is have the wind coming towards you and be within a fair few hundred meters and you will KNOW that you've either got a Phalloid type fungus of some species or another, or else the carcass of a rotting large animal in a very advanced state of putrescence, because Phalloids give out, when adult, the filthiest, most godawful, virulent reek of a mixture of rotting flesh and rancid human shit. Carries for a bloody long way too, cause is a mixture of very volatile alkyl sulfides and dialkyl di- and trisulfides, detectable at the extremely low level of a single part per trillion in air in the case of dimethyl trisulfide. The fungi in question give off a nasty mixture of alkyl sulfides, dialkyl di- and trisulfides, alkyl mercaptans that carries for one hell of a long way, especially for a little blob present as a thin layer on the surface of the knob-end of what looks, save for the white color of the stem, and its spongy texture, looks precisely like a human cock, with it's bell-end covered in greenish diarrhea, growing out of an egg-stage, which is of a size of around that of a whole human scrotum. If there are three, and they usually grow in clusters, then it looks just like a dick growing out of a ruptured infected scrotum with a bollock on either side, and it smells...well you've got to smell one, or else smell the alkyl sulfide compounds that cause the stench themselves (albeit in extremely diluted form, the pure stuff I'd not dare to make, it'd be the kind of thing you could cause the evacuation of an entire city with)

The books do say the eggs are edible when young.....don't put THOSE mushrooms in your crock-pot, no matter what the textbooks say, they might agree on the things being edible, but they are no more supposed to be cooked and eaten than we are :tard:

But...otherwise, from pulses, meats (although I'd exclude shellfish and fish from the kind of things you can leave out and definitely not reheat. Fish especially contains a large quantity of the amino-acid histidine in its flesh, compared to mammalian flesh, which upon the action of bacteria can be decarboxylated to histamine, causing, when ingested, the type of food poisoning known as scombroid poisoning.) and with that one exception edible fungi, food I've cooked myself and left out for the sort of time you've mentioned then I've never given myself food poisoning. I can't say the same of things cooked by other people. Or stuff sold by restaurants, (nearly died once, after being put in hospital twice in two successive days after eating a motorway truck stop point burrito. Collapsed in the hospital bog, ended up on IV antibiotics, vomiting lurid green liquid slop that burnt my throat like battery acid mixed with silver nitrate. Was lucky that I went back the day after eating it and was found to have collapsed.

Vegetable recipes, blehhggh, that counts as good as in my book. Veg IS poison to me. Well...I can eat cottage pie, as long as I mash it into the meat first, to avoid directly suffering the sensation of eating the potato directly as-is. Ugh!

Leaving meat (not fish, well you might be alright with seafood for just one day, as long as it isn't too hot climate-wise, but it is a MIGHT, a maybe, a ''do you feel lucky, punk?,. well, do you??'' and the rest of the  next day wondering if you've just poisoned yourself) out for a day and a bit isn't likely to do for you. Hell, they hang (uncooked) game don't they, for quite some time?

Now that is something I've never understood, how the practice of leaving dead meat to hang like that for as long as they do, before cooking and eating it can possibly end up with any other outcome than food poisoning or worse. You'd not get me doing that and serving the result to anybody I didn't loathe.

And, given my memory problem, I'm actually a REALLY paranoid old bastard when it comes to food.