Slow Cooker Chicken Tinga and Mexican Restaurant Style Rice!

It's hard to find slow cooker recipes that I both love and are truly fix it and forget it.  A lot of recipes require browning meat on the stove and other extra steps when I just want something where I can toss a bunch of stuff into the slow cooker and ignore it for several hours.  This recipe comes very close to accomplishing that.  But, it involves some pre-cooking food processor use. I sped things up by chopping the onion and garlic pretty coarsely. This meal will make your kitchen smell fantastic.  The chicken is tender, the sauce is complex.  Slightly spicy, slightly earthy, and this recipe makes a ton of it so you can put it on rice if you wnant.  The original recipe suggested serving with tortillas or over rice.  I love Mexican restaurant style rice. I decided to try and make some on a whim.  I googled a bunch of recipes and they all called for things I didn't have.  So I improvised and it turned out really well!

The rice is not terribly quick so if you're really in a hurry, serving the chicken with tortillas would be your best bet.  I suspect that the chicken and sauce would work well as leftovers or maybe even freeze.  That said, I have little experience with leftovers, but I'm trying to remedy that.

Spicy Sausage Ragu in the Slow Cooker

I'm back from falling off the face of the earth!  I was super pregnant at the time of my last post.  As a result of having a new baby around, most of my dishes over the last two months have been of the "what can we make really, really fast?" variety.  Most of them were tried and true quick favorites.  We also had a freezer full of pre-made food donated by friends and family, which is *awesome,* especially during the first few weeks when painkillers and coffee are food groups.

Since I'm on maternity leave, I decided to experiment with my slow cooker.  I bought a copy of The Italian Slow Cooker and used a recipe from it for the first time last week.  Generally, if the first recipe I try from a new book in my cookbook army isn't very good, it takes a long time for me to use the book again, I guess I'm judgy that way.  The Spicy Sausage Ragu was a huge success!! Not only did my husband and I love it, there was enough left to freeze!

It doesn't look pretty, but trust me it tastes fantastic!!

Beer and BBQ Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

I was at a party a few nights ago and someone was discussing the awesomeness of chicken cooked in beer and barbecue sauce.  I've always wanted to try a pulled meat recipe that included beer.  Cooking with wine is fun, so why not beer?  I searched the internet for a good crockpot recipe and found one with only a few ingredients.  This meal requires very little prep work and could be tossed into the slow cooker in less than 10 minutes.  But that's no fun!  Instead, I made my own BBQ sauce.  The recipe suggests that a thinner sauce is better for cooking the chicken, so I didn't leave mine on the stove for very long.  After I poured some in the slow cooker, I let it cook more to thicken it to my desired consistency.  The BBQ sauce I made freezes well.  If I was in a hurry, I'd just use a bottled sauce.  The chicken is amazing! The meat didn't taste like a chicken drowned in beer, it was a very mild flavor that went really well with the BBQ sauce.  My sauce isn't overly sweet, which I think is a good match for the beer.  The smoked paprika gave it a slight kick. After 8 hours in the slow cooker, the chicken required zero effort to shred.  When it was completely cooked, it took about five minutes to shred, mix with the sauce, and put on a bun.  This is a great dish for a work night if you can get it in the slow cooker in the morning (and it has a keep warm setting).  It's also great for leftovers.  I served it on an onion roll with some foil baked corn on the cob and a small salad.

Carnitas!

I love carnitas!! There's a Chipotle a few blocks from my office and I can't resist a rice bowl with carnitas and tons of hot sauce. I finally decided to make my own. It's probably healthier and I can freeze some for leftovers (not that "healthy" is the first word I would use to describe eating a MOUNTAIN OF MEAT).  I made this in my slow cooker.  The pork shoulder pulled apart very easily; it was so tender.  I will definitely make this again!  I didn't think ahead and so I had nothing to serve it with except salad.  Ideally, I'd use this as a filling for tacos or enchiladas.  The fresh orange juice and Mexican oregano added both sweet and savory components.  The flavor was mild and a squeeze of fresh lime juice really brought it all together.  I added some cheddar cheese and made a quick approximation of pico de gallo with a random tomato, lime, and some left over red onion from last week.

Loki's Super Tasty Turkey Chili

I felt like utter crap last night, plus I wanted to play Dragon Age 2.  So, cooking was put on the back burner (heh).  Instead I'll write about an awesome slow cooker recipe that I found on Loki's Kitchen.  I know her in real life, and she recommended it to me when I mentioned wanting to use my slow cooker for things other than making mulled wine once during the holidays.  I got my slow cooker as a wedding present years ago and have only used it a handful of times.  Several of my friends have praised the virtues of the slow cooker and I think they're right.  So far, I've only used it on weekends since there is nothing on earth that could motivate me to get up even earlier on a work day.  Morning and I are not friends. 

This recipe looked so good (and idiot proof) that I served it to friends without trying it by myself first.  Usually, I don't experiment on people.  But, I did this time and they really liked it!  I used my own combination of spices, as most people do when they make chili.  I also added extra cheese because, well, cheese.  One of my friends likes food so spicy that it would sear the tastebuds off a normal person, so I let him have some sri racha sauce on the side.  :P