A crock-pot pork barbecue is one of the easy dishes you could make in the weekends by starting it early in the morning, leave it to cook for hours so you could spend some quality time with the family. Watch movies, read boks or play some board games while dinner is cooking in the crock-pot and making the house smell like you’ve been spending hours cooking in the kitchen.

Crock Pot Pork Barbecue (Image © Dexie Wharton)

INGREDIENTS:
pork short ribs
half a bottle of bbq sauce

That’s all you need. You can make your own bbq sauce but a store bought one is perfectly fine.

Combine the two in a crock-pot. Set it to either high or low. If you’re starting it at about 11am, HIGH is the setting. Low if you’re starting it at about 9am. I’m sure you’d be able to make side dishes like mashed potatoes or buttered-garlic bread, and steamed veggies or green beans and cherry tomatoes salad, etc right before serving dinner.

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Fall Cooking: Crock-Pot Pork Barbecue

Beef Burgundy Stew

1-1/2 lb stew beef, floured
Olive oil

1/2 t thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
3 c Burgundy
1/4 c tomato paste

1/2 c water
2 c mushrooms, quartered
12 small red potatoes, quartered
6 medium carrots, 1″ pieces, or baby carrots
2 small onions, quartered
2 cans broth, 15 oz

Cornstarch in water (opt)
Salt and pepper (opt)

Brown the floured stew beef in a stock pot, it you haven’t already precooked it. Add thyme through tomato paste. Heat it up and let this simmer (or transfer to a crock pot) for at least 1-1/2 hours. About 30 minutes before you want to serve, add the water through the broth. Bring the mixture up to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Thicken with cornstarch in water if needed. Add salt and pepper if needed.

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Beef burgundy stew

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Fabulous slow cooked favorites

Delicious delicious vindaloo sauce! The spicy tomato sauce described below can be used with chicken, pork, and lamb as well as with vegetables. We particularly love it with just vegetables, though, and as one of our vegetarian meals for the week, we don’t even miss the meat!If you do decide to add meat to the dish, you can add a cinnamon stick

If you’ve done once a week food preparation, this meal will go together really quickly, but it needs to simmer for a long time in a crock pot to be its best. It’s a great make-ahead meal. Put everything together in the morning, and walk into a house filled to the brim with good smells in the evening!

Raw veggies mixed with sauce

Vegetable Vindaloo

2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 T fresh ginger, chopped fine
1 t brown sugar
1 t coriander
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t ground cloves
1/2 t dry mustard
1/2 t tumeric
1/2 t cayenne
1 T white vinegar
6 oz can tomato paste
1-1/2 c water

1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Head of cauliflower, any variety, chopped
15 oz can of kidney beans, drained
Salt and pepper
1/2 c fresh or frozen peas, thawed

Place the garlic through the water into a bowl and beat together to make the sauce. Place the onion through the kidney beans into the crock pot, pour the sauce over, and stir to coat. Simmer on low for at least 4 hours (more is fine). Add salt and pepper if desired, and stir peas into the mixture just before serving. Serve over basmati rice.

Images: Cyndi Lavin

Post from: Blisstree

Vegetable vindaloo

Here’s a super-easy Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) recipe that you can throw in the crock pot this morning and eat tonight, or that you can prepare really easily and freeze for future meals. To make this for a freezer meal, pre-cook the tenderloin in a minimal amount of water in your crock.

Slow Cooked Pork Tenderloin

1 – 2 lb pork tenderloin
2 – 3 c apple juice or cider
1 – 2 c cranberry sauce
Sesame seeds (optional, to add before serving)

To make as a freezer meal, combine the pre-cooked tenderloin with the juice and sauce in a freezer container and freeze. To serve, reheat slowly in your crock pot or slow cooker, or thaw and heat more quickly directly on the stove.  Add sesame seeds just before serving.

To serve tonight, combine uncooked tenderloin with the juice and sauce, and cook on medium heat all day in your crock pot or slow cooker.  Add sesame seeds just before serving.

Image: WikimediaCommons

Post from: Blisstree

Slow cooked pork tenderloin (OAMC)

This recipe appeared in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Eating Well magazine. The original recipe was written to serve 4, so I’m not sure why the online version was cut to 2. No matter, you can double this recipe and end up with the right proportions; just add a little more cornstarch.

I chose to use a leg cut instead of ground lamb, so I pre-cooked it for several hours in my crock pot. The meat fell apart and the little fat there was peeled right off by the time I was ready to assemble the stew. The added benefit was that I could use lamb stock instead of beef stock! I highly recommend doing this if you can manage it…not counting the time the meat was in the pot (and I was off doing other things!), this meal clocked in as a thirty minute meal easily.

Lamb, Fig, & Olive Stew for 2

8 ounces lean ground lamb, preferably leg
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon minced garlic, divided
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium beef broth
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 plum tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped dried figs
2 tablespoons finely chopped, pitted green olives
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add lamb and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until browned, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer the lamb to a sieve set over a bowl to drain; discard the fat.
2. Wipe out the pan; add oil and heat over medium-high. Add 2 tablespoons garlic and herbes de Provence and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add wine and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until slightly reduced, about 1 minute.
3. Stir together broth and cornstarch in a small bowl. Add to the pan, increase heat to high, and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly. Add tomatoes, figs, olives and pepper and return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have broken down, about 5 minutes. Add the reserved lamb and cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through, about 2 minutes.
4. Combine the remaining 1 teaspoon garlic, parsley and lemon zest in a small bowl. Serve the stew topped with the parsley mixture.

Image: Cyndi Lavin

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Lamb, Fig, & Olive Stew from Eating Well

This is a great beef stew to have for Rosh Hashanah, when everything is to be round and/or sweet to start off the new year right. Shallots, thyme, butternut squash, and cranberries all help to make this a savory but slightly sweet stew. We like it anytime during the fall and winter.  So I thought I’d make it tonight to celebrate the first full day of Hanukkah!

Cooked in a crock pot, you’ve got a couple of alternatives for preparation: stew the squash for a long time and it will break down like tzimmes, making the broth thick and rich (well, at least it seems rich, but there’s no added fat!). Stew it for a shorter time and the squash chunks will hold their shape. It really is up to you…we like it both ways.

Beef and Squash Stew

3 t canola oil
2 – 3 shallots, chopped

1 – 2 lb stew beef, cubed small
1 T flour
1 t thyme
1 t sage
Salt and pepper

2 14 oz cans of beef broth (or homemade)
4 – 5 c butternut squash, peeled and cubed (I buy it frozen in bags this way!)
1/2 c cranberries (slightly sweetened are fine)

Saute the shallots slightly in a heavy skillet and set them aside. Brown the beef, adding the flour and spices after the pink is all gone. Saute for an additional minute. Add a cup or so of broth, and scrape all the browned bits from the pan. Pour it all, plus the shallots, into the crock pot.

Plan to let the meat cook on low for at least four hours; more is fine. Add the cranberries. If you would like the squash really soft and somewhat incorporated into the broth, add it now. Otherwise, add it about 30 minutes before serving.

Image: Cyndi Lavin

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Beef and squash stew

I had the opportunity to sample some pretty tasty meatballs recently, as did some of the members of my official taste testers, The Grill Team. The Italian style meatballs from Mama Lucia were good in texture and taste, easy to prepare, and were missing some ingredients like MSG that I sometimes have problems with in prepared foods.

These meatballs are fully cooked, so they can be ready fast if needed. However, I chose to put them into some tomato sauce and let them simmer in my crock pot for awhile. Everyone loved them. Honestly, I like my own homemade meatballs better, but if I am in a hurry, I’d be happy to serve these.

There are some allergens in some of the meatball varieties, but Mama Lucia makes a sausage meatball that has no wheat or gluten products in them at all. Visit the website for more information on retail locations and ingredients.

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Mama Lucia’s Italian meatballs

A spicy lamb dish that tastes great with other Indian dishes, or with some milder sides if you’re afraid it will be overload for your family. You can vary the amount of spices used to suit your own tastes, and you can also serve it with additional plain yogurt to cool it down if desired. Basmati rice or naan flatbread makes a great accompaniment, and we also had stir-fried mixed peppers (mild orange and yellow, and a few hot).

I simplified the traditional cooking methods somewhat and used my crock pot. By the end of the day, the lamb was amazingly tender…just what we wanted.

Punjabi Masalah Lamb

1 – 2 lbs lamb meat (I used two leg cuts)
2 – 3 T fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, mashed
1 c tomato, grated or finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 t cayenne (or to taste)
1-1/2 c plain yogurt
1 t salt
1 t cumin seeds
1 – 2 t garam masalah (or mix of spices, shown below)
2 T lemon juice
2 T fresh coriander

Mix the ginger through the salt, and place the mixture with the meat into a crock pot. Heat to high, and then turn it down and cook on low for 4 hours or more. Ten to fifteen minutes before serving, add the cumin seeds, garam masalah, and lemon juice and stir. Sprinkle the coriander over the meat to serve.

Garam Masalah, Punjabi style
4 T coriander seeds
2 T cumin seeds
2 T black peppercorns
2 t cardamom seeds
1 t whole cloves
1 long cinnamon stick
Grind to a fine powder.

Image: Cyndi Lavin

Post from: Blisstree

Punjabi masalah lamb

Not that polenta isn’t served in other parts of the country, but it is as common as pasta in the north. And it is amazingly versatile as well. Basic polenta is a snap to make and can be dressed up or dressed down in an infinite number of ways. It can be served with a rich tomato sauce, with or without veggies, sprinkled with parmesan, loaded with meats and onions, topped with tapenade, on and on and on! It makes a great basis for a vegetarian meal, a main dish, or a side dish.

In larger grocery stores, you can buy pre-made polenta in “bricks” that can be sliced. OK, fine, but hardly necessary. It couldn’t be easier to make this basic dish. All you need is cornmeal, water, and salt. Really! The only trick is that you’ve got to stir it constantly while it’s cooking, but it’s done inside of 20 minutes. There’s actually a method for doing it on low in a slow cooker or crock pot and not stirring it at all past the initial mix, but that takes several hours. You might want to try it, though, if you think you’ll be too busy at the end of the day.

Anyway, here’s how I make it. Later, I’ll be sharing recipes that vary this a bit, along with some nice combos of ingredients and sauces to dress it up for dinner. This recipe serves 4 as a side dish: keep the 3 to 1 ratio if you vary the amounts.

Basic Polenta

3 c water
1 t salt
1 c coarse cornmeal

In a large heavy saucepan, boil the water and salt. Pour the cornmeal in slowly, stirring constantly. Drop the heat to low and continue to cook for 15 to 20 minutes or so, still stirring, until the cornmeal mix pulls away from the sides. I like to add a tablespoon of butter to the mix just before it’s finished and stir it in. Scrape the polenta out into a 3 cup covered serving dish and let it sit until slightly cooled. You can put it in the fridge for later and then just heat it up for a few minutes in the oven, or leave it on the counter for a bit. Slice it up to serve it, along with whatever toppings and sauce you want to add. I like to put mine in a round glass dish (see above), and cut it into wedges.

Polenta with sundried tomatoes and blackeyed peas

Images: Cyndi Lavin

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Polenta…the northern Italian staple