This item is for sharing ideas and recipes intended for a crock pot.  I 
have a crock pot, and would like to make more use of it.

44 responses total.

Well, here's about the simplest there is:
Pot roast.
Start the night before you want to eat it.
Into crock pot, put:
- beef roast
- broth left over from last pot roast (if any)
- water to make up for not enough broth (seriously cover meat, & then some)

Leave crock pot on high until everything is hot.  (Depending on your crock
pot, it may be helpful to cheat & preheat broth or water or both.)  Turn it
down to low.  Go to bed, go about next day's business.

The next evening, prepare whatever you're going to eat with the crock pot.
Serve meat as needed, using broth to taste.  In general, we don't ever salt
this in preparation, but a bit of salt may be desirable at the table.

This generally provides lots of useful leftovers - both meat & broth are used
as ingredients in other dishes.

In general, the more leftover broth you have to put in it, the better the
results.  If you use only water, both meat & broth will taste somewhat thin.

If time is available, adding some vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc.)
and spices (and yes, bay leaf is a likely one) can turn this into a more
complete stew or soup.  You'll need them to be in long enough to cook
thoroughly, but you don't want them to be cooked to death, and that depends
on your crock pot.  Probably starting them with the meat the night before is
way too long, but tossing them in in the morning may not be.  Depends.

Cool!  Thanks!

You completely cover the meat with water (or broth, but I don't have 
any of that)?  Should I use some kind of beef bouillion or soup mix or 
beef broth?

What spices do you use, and how much?

I've never cooked a pot roast.  I didn't know you could do stuff like 
that in a crock pot!

This is the only thing we use our crock pot for, these days.

Allergies preclude our using store-bought bouillon or most soup mixes,
but you could do that at will -- the important thing is to have the
meat completely covered with flavored liquid.

This is a descendant of the way my mother did it, in a steamer skillet;
she browned the meat on both sides first, then covered it with liquid
and simmered for 3-4 hours.  I never found a steamer skillet for myself,
but discovered that the crock-pot method gives a more tender result, with 
flavor as good or better.

All right.  Thanks!  I'll give it a try.

Yes, you want the meat completely covered.  You can use a good deal more
liquid, depending on a couple of things: how much broth you want, and whether
you're starting with broth or just water, and how thick you want the broth.
If it's just water, the results will be better if you don't use too much. 
(The stuff that cooks out of the meat & makes it broth will be less diluted.)
If you're starting with some broth, and want to provide broth for other
recipes, add water to make up the volume.

For spices, I'd say to look at cookbook recipes for something like beef stew
or beef-vegetable soup, & use what seems to make sense out of what they
suggest.  We mostly keep this simple; as Grace said, she started doing it
because this was a staple in her home, & her mother mostly didn't spice things
very much at all.  She does most of the cooking these days (these years). 
I suspect that if I were making this I'd play with spicing it, & also put in
onions, carrots, potatoes, maybe some celery, & such.

I have made some pretty good things in the crock pot. Chili is easy. I 
just put some ground beef or turkey (browned) , diced tomatoes, tomato 
paste, onions, canned kidney and/or black beans along with some spices 
and then just let it go for the better part of a day. I have been 
thinking about making a meatless kind with tofu cubes. 

I dont really have a recipe so it never is exactly the same but it 
usually comes out pretty good. Well one time, I tried to be creative 
with the spices and ended up with what my dinner guest called "really 
good chili style soup"  That is the nicest thing about crock pots, even 
mistakes usually taste ok. 

Actually, here's another one.  I make this, but not with a crock pot, but
there's no reason it couldn't be done in one.

Split pea soup.

Start with boiling water.  (With the container I'm making it in, I think I've
got 2 or 3 quarts.)  It probably doesn't actually need to be boiling, but you
want it hot when you add the peas.

Add some split peas.  Again, with what I'm using, I think I'm putting in 3
cups or a bit more.  How thick you like the soup is a factor, too.  I use
mostly green peas, then add some yellow ones (or, these days, some lentils
we have on hand).

Also add a ham bone with some meat on it.  Or do what we prefer: find a smoked
turkey drumstick & use that.  If your pot is smallish, this may present a bit
of a problem, as the bone may be too long & prevent the cover from going down,
which with a crock pot is not good.

When the peas are mushy & the meat is cooked enough to be falling off the
bone (or starting to, anyway), take the meat out & put it aside to cool.  This
probably will take longer in a crock pot, & it'll be better anyway if it has
plenty of time.  Say, 3 hours or more, at a guess?  That's on low, I'd think.
Might burn the soup if you really cook it on high.  Then chop up an onion or
two, some celery, some green pepper, some carrots, whatever you like in this.
(It will already be obvious to some that I'm not a traditionalist on this.)
Add a bay leaf, some garlic, maybe some paprika, a bit of black pepper, too.
(Again, I'm not a purist - I use garlic powder rather than fresh.)  When the
meat is cool enough to not burn your fingers, which it may be by this time,
remove it from the bone, cutting it into small pieces in the process.
(I remove the skin from the smoked turkey & dispose of it.)  Put the meat in.

Oh, yes.  Depending on your taste, you may want to do something to break up
the peas, after you take the meat out but before putting other stuff in.
Some people force a bunch of the mushy peas through a sieve.  If I bother,
I usually do something like using an eggbeater.

Since this is a crock pot, you need to allow some time for it to come back
up to full heat.  When it's hot, let it cook a while longer, at least an
hour or so.  Taste and correct the seasoning - it's only at this point that
I even think about adding salt, and it may not need any if the meat was
salted enough in curing.

Again, you want the vegetables cooked but not to death.  But you can easily
leave them cooking for a couple of hours or more, depending on your taste.

If you're concerned about fat content (or prefer this with less fat), you
could chill the soup, skim off the fat, & reheat before serving.

At low setting in a crock pot, I'd imagine you could cook peas & meat pretty
much indefinitely.  I personally make it on the stove top - partly habit,
partly I think the pan holds more than our crock pot; I usually start it mid-
to late-morning, & have it ready by suppertime.  Besides the supper (for the
whole family, but I'm the one who really *loves* pea soup), I get at least
a week's worth of microwavable lunches out of it.

slynne slipped in, for whatever it's worth.  Like chili & pea soup, I'd
think, most bean soups would do well, straight from a cookbook recipe but
probably allowing a bit more time for things to cook.  If you were to use
canned beans (which I wouldn't, myself, but which many recipes will take for
granted), you'd do away with the time needed just for the beans to cook to an
edible state.

And I should have said: supermarket packages of dried beans & peas commonly
come with recipes/instructions on the bag.  I use that as a guide, at least.
For pea soup, I tend to use somewhat more peas (to given amount of water) than
they say, because I prefer it thicker.

Yeah, dont make something with dried beans if the receipe you are using 
calls for canned beans. I did that once. ick. 

Here is a dead-easy recipe for delicious pulled-pork sandwiches.

Buy a 1 1/2 lb. boneless pork tenderloin or boneless pork loin.
Cut it in half, put it in the crockpot.  Add one thinly sliced sweet
onion.  Pour on 1/2 cup of either apple juice, pineapple juice, 
or ginger ale.  Cover and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.  Drain off
the liquid and shred the meat by pulling in apart with two forks.
Pour 16 ounces of KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce over and still to coat
all.  Cover and allow to reheat briefly, if necessary. 
Serve on buns. 

Don't try this with any cut of meat that includes bones.  You'll
be sorry. ;-)

The roast can go from 1 1/2 pounds to 3 pounds and work fine.
You just might add a little less BBQ sauce if all you've really
got is one small pork tenderloin.

I've also made chili in my crock pot, and I did it like slynne did.  
(No recipe, start with some of this and add some of that.)  I forgot to 
put salt in one time, and it tasted awful.  (That was the origin of the 
comments I may have made about feeling like an idiot when I decided not 
to put salt in my chicken soup.)  Mostly chili made in a haphazard 
style is just fine.

I have a crock pot recipe book that includes split pea soup.  I just 
got the book, though, and haven't made anything from it, let alone 
split pea soup.  

I've heard that the only crock pot cooking rule is not to load it up
with coolish food...it may take a *long* time for the crock pot to get
all the food heated above the "bacterial paradise" temperature range,
and "hot enough to kill the bacteria" does NOT mean "hot enough to
destroy the toxins that the bacteria produced".

This depends a lot on your crock pot model & how you use it.

What Walter said.  It does vary a *lot*.  Preheating stuff is a pain, but can
be a very good idea.  Depending on your pot, starting on high & then turning
down after a while (an hour, whatever) may suffice.

My crock pot is a 3.5 quart rectangle-shaped metal bowl that sits on a 
heating pad.  It doesn't seem to take very long to heat up; I'm usually 
surprised by how hot it gets in 10 or 15 minutes.  So far I've only 
used it for chili and soup; if it's simmering, that should be a pretty 
good indication it's getting as hot as it needs to be, shouldn't it?  

Bacteria are usually killed at about 140 F and boiling point (simmer) is much
higher than that, so yes.

Now, I don't have a crockpot, but I expect you'd get better broth if you brown
the meat first anyway.  That would bring it up to room temperature and kill
off any surface nasties too, yes?

Browsing the outside of something may not get the inside very warm.
Microwaving it might do so.

(Usually most of the nasties are on the surface.  That's why rare hamburgers
are riskier than rare steak -- when you grind meat, the surface gets mixed
up with the inside, and the nasties get spread all the way through.)

Re #15
Dunno.  Is it down in a heated well that keeps all the sides warm, or
up where cool room air on the outside of the metal might keep a top
corner a warm bacterial paradise while the middle simmers?

On boullion and allergies:  Have you tried Herb-Ox?  For a long time, they
were the only brand that did NOT use MSG.  Now, some of the others are getting
the message and making MSG-free variants.  I still prefer Herb-Ox.

(The allergies in question are to corn products.)

(As in "Partially hyrdogenated corn oil" and "Hydrolised Corn Protein"?  I
hadn't looked for those before.  Ugh.)

I suspect there may be some sort of organic brand out there that does without
those.  Then again, they might just replace them with "Homemade organic corn
oil" and "Natural hand-extracted corn protein" or some such.  

There's a great crock pot recipe book that my mom has that I'll have to
get the name of when I have a moment offline.

If anyone is interested, I'll list some great recipes LIFE had a little
while ago in Friday's paper.

I would like them.  I bought a new smart pot a couple of years ago.  I 
do love it, but I would love to use it more.

I too would like to see those recipes, lumen.

Yesterday I used our crockpot to make my mom's beef ragout.  John started 
it around 10:00.  As it turns out I was late getting out of work and then 
it took longer to get home, but when I did, dinner was pretty much ready 
and waiting.  Just needed to boil some egg noodles and serve.

What I have found is that a whole lot of crockpot recipes come out with 
the same weird undertaste.  Can't quite describe it, but it's a different 
taste and texture than slow cooking on the stovetop or in the oven.  So 
when I hit on a recipe that works, I'm happy, because I do like the 
convenience a crockpot affords.

I like to make chili in mine but today I got a craving for split pea 
soup and it occurred to me that I could probably make that in the crock 
pot too. mmmm

I recently tried some vegetarian chili, from a recipe I found in a book, that
turned out great.  Will have to try some regular chili or soup sometime soon.

Somebody I know makes a veggie chili with bulgar.  It's pretty darn yummy :)

I dug out my crockpot today; with this cold weather, I need something hot to
eat!  Yesterday while I was fixing something else for lunch, I had baked some
chicken breast that had been in the 'fridge.  However, I must've had it in
the oven a couple minutes too long, as it came out a bit on the dry side
[unlike the chicken I've made in the recent past].  So to try and soak up a
bit of moisture back in, I'm trying to make a stew/soup sort of thing. I cut
up the chicken and put that in the pot and added a bag of [frozen] peppers
and onion, and some diced tomatoes.  I added some mostly cooked elbow macaroni
and then some seasonings. After this was warmed up a bit, I tested it for
spiceyness and decided it needed a bit more. I had it on high for a bit, it's
now been on low for a couple hours.  I hope it'll taste as good as it smells
[and hopefully, the chicken won't seem so dry].

I have a hard time with chicken breast not drying out.  

I cooked a pot roast in my crockpot yesterday for about 10 hours.  It 
was tasty last night.

I've never fixed a pot roast but I do like to eat it! I'll have to try it
sometime.  As for chicken, I normally will marinate it ahead of time or add
some kind of sauce or a bit of soup right before sticking it in the oven; that
seems to work best for me..

My recommendation is to put the veggies *under* the meat, not on top, 
to get them cooked.

I'd probably do that if I were to make a crock-pot pot roast. The veggies I
used today for my chicken 'stew', I eat raw OR cooked, so even if they ended
up not being cooked all of the way thru-that'd be ok. To me, they're more
flavorful if they aren't cooked to long. But I can see putting some kinds of
veggies on the bottom to help cook them all of the way through [like
potatoes].   :-)

I have never made a pot roast in a crock pot but I have a crock pot and 
I really love pot roast. 

Ok, this is a silly question: If one goes to the grocery store, is the 
pot roast labeled "pot roast"?

That IS a good question, Lynne.  I've never seen anything in the meat section
called 'pot roast' but maybe I wasn't looking close enough-since I've never
looked for an actual pot roast. So perhaps its made from a certain cut of
beef?

Brisket.

Actually, I use chuck roast or round roast for pot roast.  They are usually
cheaper than brisket and much easier to find on sale.

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