Hello recipe exchanging friends. Thanks so much for picking up my slack last week and sharing some wonderful comfort food recipes.
This week’s recipe exchange theme has been inspired by a food blogger that I really like, Chick in the Kitchen. On Twitter yesterday, she shared a split pea soup & flanken recipe that she was cooking in the crock pot as she tweeted. Being done with dinner at 9 a.m. is definitely a plus of crock pot cooking.
You can also make almost anything in them — they’re not just for roasts anymore! Unfortunately, I have just barely scratched the surface in my crock pot creativity, which is why I am so excited to read your favorite slow cooker recipes.
The recipe I’m sharing today is one of my favorites for Shabbat dinner. I originally found it on the OU’s website here and I’ve modified it slightly for my family’s tastes. (By the way, if the combination of salsa and peanut butter sounds odd, stay with me – it is really delicious!)
Thaiish Chicken
Ingredients:
- 8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1 1/2 cups of chunky salsa (I like to use the Pioneer Woman’s Restaurant Style Salsa recipe)
- 2/3 cup peanut butter
- 4 T lemon or lime juice (I prefer lime, but often have lemons, so that’s what we tend to use)
- 2 T soy sauce – low sodium
- 1 T grated ginger
Directions:
- In a medium to large crockpot, mix together everything but the chicken.
- Add in the chicken, making sure to fully coat the pieces.
- Cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or 4 hours on high) until thoroughly cooked.
- Serve garnished with chopped peanuts, fresh cilantro or lime. Or nothing – that’s also good.
Serves 6-8.
I usually serve this with brown rice and green beans (sauteed with garlic and ginger). Dinner takes me less than 15 minutes to prepare and it’s completely delicious!
Your turn: What are you favorite slow cooker / crock pot recipes? Please share in the comments section. Or if you have a blog, please feel free to link up using the Mr. Linky.
B’tayavon & Shabbat Shalom!
Aw, Mara you just made my snowy morning! Off to link up some Crock-Pot recipes for you!
Thank YOU for inspiring me. As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to do a crock pot theme! Looking forward to your links 🙂
Oops, I think I just did the link up incorrectly. This is the recipe I was trying to share: http://www.fatfree.com/archive/1999/apr/msg00139.html. This black bean chili turns out great in the crock pot. I’ve done it for a weeknight dinner (started before I left for work) and for Shabbat lunch. It’s healthy and rather inexpensive too! Goes great in a taco shell or a tortilla with some sour cream and cheddar cheese.
I have been trying to use my crockpot more and more. Last night (Thursday) I cut up lots of veggies and put them in the fridge. This morning (around 7 am) I put a tablespoon of oil in the bottom of the crockpot, dumped the veggies in and then laid a whole chicken (seasoned with a dry rub) on top of the veggies. I added 1/2 cup of water to the whole thing and put it on. It is attached to a timer so that it won’t be on all of Shabbos. I have done this quite a few times and it turns out great plus the house smells good all day. This has given me so much more time on these short Fridays — especially since I had to shovel today!
I also have been experimenting with an electric pressure cooker. I find using the crockpot and the pressure cooker I am creating time for myself and using the stove and oven less!!!
Isn’t it amazing how much time the crock pot frees up? There is a “season” in my life for potchkied recipes… but this isn’t it 😉
I was so happy when i discovered I could set a timer to turn the crock off right when we’ll be eating shabbos lunch (esp great in warm weather since the crockpot heats up the house as long as it’s on – plus shabbos days are so long in summer)
I made Coq au Vin in the crockpot for Shabbat Sylvester (New Year’s Eve). It’s traditionally made with bacon, so I used pastrami; beef-fry would work, or you could leave it out entirely. This will scale up easily if you have a bigger crockpot.
1.5 to 2 lbs frozen chicken (boneless skinless breast worked just fine)
6 slices cooked and crumbled pastrami
8 oz sliced baby portabella mushrooms
1 cup baby carrots
1 chopped onion
3 cloves chopped or minced garlic
1/2 t black pepper
1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 cup chicken broth or water
1.5 cups red wine
2 large fresh thyme sprigs
Cook the pastrami (I baked it on a foil-lined baking sheet at 400 for 15 minutes).
Dump the frozen chicken into your crockpot and layer the rest of the ingredients in the order listed.
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes or your favorite pasta.
Oh, and the best crockpot advice I’ve found is this: if you need to cook it longer than the recipe calls for (say you leave for work at 7 a.m. and won’t be eating until 7 p.m.) – add an additional 1/4 cup of liquid for every 2 hours. So when I made this and knew we wouldn’t be back from shul until 6.30 or 7, I put in an extra half-cup of broth. Worked beautifully.
Thanks so much for sharing! Your recipe looks wonderful – my husband would definitely love it! And I appreciate your tip on the extra 1/4 cup of liquid. Very helpful.
You can also make the entire dish aside from the meat and put it in the fridge overnight. Pop it in the crock pot in the am with the already cold meat — this adds about 2 hours to the cook time b/c the ceramic crock pot has to heat up. You can add another 1 by using frozen meat but that scares some people…
I know this is old, but thought I’d add – be careful when putting the crock pot straight from the fridge to the base. The heat can crack your ceramic pot.
I think I shared this one already. This is my go to Shabbos Chicken I don’t have time recipe.
Whole Chicken Crock Pot
SERVES 4
Ingredients
4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 large roasting chicken
1 cup onion, chopped (optional)
Directions
In a small bowl, combine the spices.
Remove any giblets from chicken and clean chicken.
Rub spice mixture onto the chicken.
Place in resealable plastic bag and refrigerate overnight. (I think I have done this once. Most times I just rub the spice on and stick it in the crockpot.)
When ready to cook, put chopped onion in bottom of crock pot. (sometimes I don’t do the onion and it is still find).
Add chicken. No liquid is needed, the chicken will make it’s own juices.
Cook on low 4-8 hours.
Note: My crock pot cooks this recipe in 4-5 hours. Times may vary based on size of chicken.
This looks great – I was unsure if you could make something that wasn’t *stew* in a crockpot, so it’s great to hear that you can! I’m going to have to give this a shot. Since getting one a few years ago I’ve stuck to soups and stews but I’m getting bored of them!
I LOVE my crock pot and Thai is my all time fave, for sure so thanks for the recipe! I make Weight Watcher’s beef stew and it is *always* a hit! There’s something about all of those fresh veggies that feels so wholesome and nutritious (Um, probably because it is!)!
Ugh, frustrating, I keep using the linky thing wrong. Here is what I’m trying to link:
Best Gluten-Free Cholent (soo good! Barley-free)
http://glutenfreebay.blogspot.com/2008/09/quest-for-best-gluten-free-cholent.html
This can also be made in the crockpot:
http://glutenfreebay.blogspot.com/2008/01/spicy-black-eyed-peas-and-collard.html
I am badly in need of crockpot recipes that work for weekdays (ingredients get put in before work) and that work for shabbos (i.e. can handle a LONG time in the crock) so I’m excited to see peoples’ links and recipes!
Tovah – Your cholent recipe worked on the link! Thanks so much for sharing. A friend at lunch told me today that she successfully makes chili in the crockpot over Shabbat, which I thought sounded promising. I may give that a try next week. (In fact, I’m pretty sure that there was a “chili cholent” recipe left by a reader in my cholent recipe exchange.)
Mara: Thanks! Oh good, glad it showed up. I initially left a link with my name as the link name (because Mr Linky does in fact ask for your name!) Oops. Anyhow, we do make chili frequently in our crockpot. I need to get a cheap milchig crock soon because we are getting tired of not being able to put cheese or real sour cream on our (pareve) chili due to it being made in our one and only (fleischig) crockpot. I’ve never made meat chili for shabbos because I fear ground meat would dissolve after that many hours of cooking. But veg chili has worked great – I usually put a few bay leaves, a lot of cumin, fresh onions & garlic, large slices of carrot & celery, red bell pepper, beans galore, and a few cans or aseptic packs (preferred by us because they’re BPA-free… Pomi brand from Trader Joe’s) of whatever cubed/strained/pureed tomatoes we have. Or even just tomato sauce. I use canned beans for this because my crockpot manual says that the acid in tomatoes will cause dry beans not to soften right – But I’m getting suspicious about whether this is really true and will probably give it a shot with dry beans soon.
Great post and even better comments! This is giving me hope for finding some tasty meals for this semester (my last), when we’re more time-crunched and money-crunched than ever.
Presoak your beans, and you should be okay. I make chili with dried beans all the time. They soften just fine.
Great topic! I use my crock pot at least once a week for a weeknight dinner, and every weekend for a Shabbat chulent. I have a whole bunch of chulent recipes on my blog, but my favorite is my mother’s meat chulent, with beans, barley, potatoes, cumin and chili powder.
1/2 bag mixed chulent beans
1 cup pearl barley
3 Idaho potatoes, cubed
1-2 pounds of flanken
1 onion chopped
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons salt
Soak the beans overnight. Drain and combine with the remaining ingredients. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil and then reduce to low. Leave the chulent simmering on low until Shabbos morning, or until you’re ready to eat, at least 24 hours if possible. Serve hot.
I must be the only Jew who has never bought flanken. Can you tell me how much it tends to be per pound? Is it a cheap cut of meat? I never buy brisket because it comes in such huge quantities and I can’t afford it. I was vegetarian for years and am still trying to figure out what cuts of meat are good, cheap and kosher (and esp if they’re good for the crockpot). Thanks!
At my local Shop Rite, there are cubes of flanken which are labeled “Beef for Cholent”. (Ah, the wonders of living in Bergen County, NJ) They are $5.99 a pound. The meat is quite fatty. I think that it adds a nice richness to the cholent.
I really really wish I could submit a recipe to this, but all slow cooker recipes I use are not original, but I will GREATLY enjoy the contributions here! And will make the spilt pea soup probably next week!
Thanks for this post. I just found your blog and love it! I really like the idea of eating vegeterian during the week. This will save us lots of money. I recently started back to work full time and using my crockpot, especially on Fridays is the only way I can get Shabbat dinner on the table. I am totally going to try your Thai Chicken this Friday. Thanks for sharing.
Our favorite is the beef stew flavored with rosemary and orange rind from “The Healthy Slow Cooker”, by Judith Finlayson. It takes about an hour of prep on Thursday night, but it smeels so good when I walk in the door on Friday afternoon!
We buy kosher organic local beef (at $12/pound for stew meat!), so cooking it this way, with a lot of barley and mushrooms, is the only way to make eating beef economical at all for us!
I’m a vegetarian, but frequently am looking for chicken recipes for my son and husband. This Thai Chicken recipe looks so interesting and easy! I only wish I wasn’t already using my crockpot for cholent for shabbos lunch because it would have been perfect for dinner tomorrow! I guess I know what I’m making next shabbos! Thanks for the recipe…and if I did the link thing correctly, my crockpot French Chicken Stew should be number 6 on the list. It was a hit last weekend 🙂
Thanks so much for linking up, Mostly! That stew looks wonderful- and fairly frugal for a chicken dish, which you know I love 😉
The Thai chicken really is excellent and so very easy. I would imagine you could do the same thing in the oven, although I’m terrible at converting the times and temperatures.
Id love to see crockpot recipes that are not traditional chullants for example does anyone know if you can make chicken cacciatorie in a crockpot for Shabbas lunch?? The chili was a great idea
I am a very young returnee to the faith,so young in fact that I have yet to observe a proper Shabbos. Can you use a crock pot during the Shabbos? I had wondered. Or do we simply eat pre-made food like sandwiches for the duration? Please don’t laugh ,I really have no idea how to go about feeding my family during the Sabbath
Mimi,
I am assuming you already had this question answered. We use a crockpot on Shabbos, as I believe most people do. Sorry for the delay. I was looking for a recipe and found this question, so I thought I would answer…. Good Shabbos!