I got a little single-serving crock pot on Black Friday, so I’m curious what your favorite things to make in one are.
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Single serving crock pot is (to me) otherwise known as the queso pot!
Get a bag of tortilla chips
Throw a block of velveeta in the pot and cover it with Ro-Tel
Turn it on and get all melty
Stir until combined
Open your bag of chips and put yourself into a cheese-coma.
My buddy makes this for his Superbowl parties, it’s the main reason I go since I’m not into football
I am embarrassed about how often I do this just because I can. My love of advanced cheese polymers with spicy/crunchy has surely packed the nooks and crannies of my gut with wads of micro-plastics but I just can’t help myself around queso.
With something called sodium citrate and a splash of milk, you can make quality cheese behave like Velveeta. Search “sodium citrate” cheese if your interested. Oh, and you can make sodium citrate from baking soda and limes so it’s not like it’s unhealthy or anything.
I happen to loathe Velveeta because of Jimmy Carter so I was excited to get my nachos at home again.
I think my dad’s family got cheese. I assumed it was because they were native American. I don’t remember ever trying it - i just saw a couple of big blocks that said CHEESE on a shelf.
That would be Sharp American, and it tastes like my childhood…
What did Jimmy Carter do to your cheese to make you loathe it?
That non sequitur caught my attention, too…best guess is they’re referring to the Carter Administration trying to stabilize the dairy industry with subsidies in 1977 which led to a massive backlog of cheap, processed cheese stuff that Reagan unloaded on welfare recipients throughout the '80s.
Thank you!
Velveeta is trash
It is. His point is you can replicate the gooey texture with a cheese that’s actually edible with almost zero effort, though.
I fully understood their point which is why I replied to them and not the person recommending Velveeta.
Sodium Citrate is frickin awesome.
Chuck. Chop it finely with a knife. Don’t use ground meat. Add salt and pepper, sear it from all sides inside the crock pot.
When it forms a fond add some random wine that you’ve been chugging. No sweetened wine, please. But red, rosé, white, it’s all fine. Use it to deglaze the bottom.
Then add onions, garlic, red peppers, all of them peeled and minced. And broth. If you don’t have broth you do freeze chicken bones, right? …wait, I should stop filling my freezer with chicken bones.
As the beef gets soft add whatever veggies you have. Take into account cooking times. Potato, button mushrooms (you’re now a veggie, get into the pot
Nebby), carrot, cabbage. And tomato paste, I buy it by kilogram and then freeze it into ice cubes, I put “enough” of them there. Adjust seasoning as necessary.Near the end use your judgment. You can reduce it further, or add some thickener (I like to add brown roux), or leave it as is. Then eat it over polenta or cooked taters.
Definitely not a single-serving recipe, but my favorite is chili.
This was originally a recipe I found on chowhound, then modified it. I make this recipe in a 6qt slow cooker:
- 2lb ground beef (I use 80/20)
- 1lb chorizo (can be replaced with any type of spicy sausage or omitted)
- 2 yellow onions
- 6-8 chili peppers (I’ve used jalapenos, serranos, and habaneros before, or replace with 1 red/orange/yellow bell pepper)
- 2 15oz cans diced tomatoes
- 1 15oz can tomato sauce
- 1 15oz can black beans
- 1 7oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
- 4 cloves minced garlic
- 4 tbsp chili powder
- 3 tbsp cumin
- 3 tbsp smoked paprika
- 2 tbsp cayenne pepper (for added heat, can be omitted)
Brown chorizo and add to slow cooker. Brown ground beef and add to slow cooker. Dice onions and peppers, add to pan and let soften using the beef/chorizo fat, then add to slow cooker once beginning to caramelize. Puree or finely chop chipotle peppers and add to slow cooker. Add all canned items to slow cooker. Add garlic and spices to slow cooker. Stir to mix ingredients. Cook on low for 8 hrs or high for 4; 8 hrs is preferred, as chili benefits from longer cooking times for flavors to develop and meld.
Chili is a great recipe, now that we in the northern hemisphere are headed into winter. It’s also a great meal prep recipe, as 2nd day chili is better than 1st day IMO, it reheats well, and also freezes well.
De-glaze that pan with some liquid and add to slow cooker, don’t let that fond go to waste!
The onions do a pretty good job of deglazing as they release their liquid.
Really tasty all veg soup. Crockpot lentil soup
Zero-effort french dip:
- Buy an arm roast at the grocery store the night before, sleep.
- Wake up, dump in arm roast, a can of french onion soup, top off with water or beef stock
- Cover and set to Low, then go to work for the day
- Return home in the evening, shred meat with some forks, serve on buns with cheese of your choice
It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.
For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:
For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:
- 1 tsp whole cloves
- 1 tsp whole allspice
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 1/3 cup packed (~70g) light brown sugar
- 1 large orange, sliced
Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.
If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.
One thing I love about owning an automatic pressure cooker is that the days of forgetting to prepare a meal before I leave for work are long gone. No need to slow cook, when you can have the most tender, delicious meat in under an hour. Most meats take 20 minutes. It’s healthier too because the faster cooking retains nutrients. And more flavorful because the pressure helps your sauce/seasonings infuse within the muscle fibers.
No kitchen should go without.
I think I’d keep using the slow cooker in that situation, because 100% of slow cooker time is parallelized with work time. Even if the pressure cooker is fast, it can’t compete with zero.
Though, having the pressure cooker available for when I’m a brainless oaf who didn’t start the slow cooker in the morning sounds like a great fallback option.
Does the cider ever reach boiling point in the crockpot?
My wife loves apples, but there’s a compound in them she’s allergic to. Cooking them denatures the compound and makes them safe.
Not on low, no. I make no promises about high.
I think slowcookers in general avoid reaching boiling temps because the whole point is being able to leave them run unattended for hours, which you can’t safely do if it’s boiling off.
My best guess for a potential solution if you’re gung-ho to try and find a way is to pour the juice into a saucepan and bring it to a boil separately, let it cool, then prepare as directed. But I have no idea what that will do to this compound she is allergic to, whether boiling water is sufficiently hot to do that, how long you need to hold it there to make it safe, or what else boiling it will do to the flavor. I also have no idea what the nature of the allergic reaction is and how much risk it puts her in. So for lawyer reasons I can’t in good faith reccommend you make this for her at all.
If you have actual medical advice telling you what temp denatures the bad compound and how long it needs to be held there to make it safe, try leaving water sit in your slow cooker with an accurate thermometer and see for yourself if it gets to that temp. If you can confirm that, then it might be safe.
Experiment with it at your own risk with her consent, I guess.
I call it sausage breakfast dip, but I’ve seen it called Crack Dip cuz it’s sooo tasty. Only 3 ingredients: sausage ( browned), cream cheese, RO-tell chilies. I make it on a big batch for pot lucks, but you can definitely make a small batch in a single serving slow cooker.
Here is a similar recipe Sausage breakfast dip
Omg, that looks so good. And it seems so easy to make!
Weed butter.
I quite enjoy mozzarella stuffed meatballs although it’s not very healthy. Also the tortellini chicken soup thing that was popular elsewhere is nice although I modify mine quite a bit.
Also just “meat and potatoes and whatever else” is a nice soup but sadly when it’s good I’ve forgotten what what the everything else was.
Black bean and sweet potato chili!
Sometimes I just throw crap in that I think might go good together and let it rip for a couple hours, results are usually delicious
I don’t have exact measurements or anything but this is how I make pot roast stew:
Braise your pot roast to give it a crust and get some fond. Put it in the pot.
Deglaze the fond with about a cup of whatever liquid you want and pour it into the pot. I don’t go out to buy things other than the meat for this (I make it when it’s cold and I have vegetables that need to be used before they go bad), so if I have a red wine I’ll use that, if I just have stock I’ll use that, and if I don’t have either, just water is fine. The wine is best, though.
Toss in a couple potatoes, diced. Or use those little ones. I like those just because they can be tossed in whole.
1 medium onion, peeled. Doesn’t need to be chopped.
Bag of baby carrots.
Chopped celery.
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and MSG.
Turn that sucker on and wait 6-8 hours. Stir it all up into a paste before serving because it’ll be soft as hell and everything in there just melts.
BBQ pulled pork.
Brown a pork shoulder, rest it on a bed of onions, and slow cook/ braise it in a sweet marinade. (a can of soda works great).
(optional) Once the meat is fork tender, shred it, spread it out on a thin layer on a cookie sheet and broil it in the oven to recreate the burned/ dehydrated texture of smoked meat.
Serve with BBQ sauce and pickles on a warm hamburger bun.
I have a similar sort of recipe, but instead of the broiler, you can also drain all the liquid, put it back in the slow cooker and set it to high for 1 hour.
I usually drain the liquid to a small pan and boil it until it becomes much less liquid and more like a sauce, I add it back to the slowcooker after the hour is done.
We do pork roast with vegetables often.
Expect about half a pound before cooking per serving Add carrots, onions, seasonings, about 2-3 cups of water.
Serve with rolls or buttered bread.
Seasonings that work are salt, pepper, garlic. I have added apples or pineapples in the past. Feel free to experiment!
I make this at least once a month for meal prep: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/73634/colleens-slow-cooker-jambalaya/
I like stews like this in the winter: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/14685/slow-cooker-beef-stew-i/
