Slow Cooker Coconut Beef Curry

This is my new absolute favourite.

I love slow cooker meals that take like 8 hours. The main benefit for me is that I can put one on in between night shifts and wake up to the smell of a delicious dinner that’s all cooked and ready to go. It’s the one time in my life I feel like an adult.

Beef is great for that. 6-8 hours on low and you have chunks of beef that are falling apart. They can literally be cut with a spoon. You need that in your life.

This curry is an insanely delicious meal. I felt LUCKY to wake up to this meal. I’m not going to say it made night shift worth it, but I wasn’t mad at it.

The other great thing is that the spice paste makes enough for 2 curries, so you can either halve it or make the full amount and store some in the fridge for a week or two so you can have yet another delicious meal.

Slow Cooker Honey Chilli Chicken

Ooh, this is a good one. I haven't had time to cook much with work and revision, so anything to make the process simpler is a good one for me!

The slow cooker is such a great invention. I use mine at least 2-3 times per month, normally on a weekend. There's nothing better than shoving some food into the slow cooker on a lazy Sunday morning and knowing that dinner is taken care of so that you can focus on the important Sunday activities which include sitting on the sofa and reading the paper.

I don't know about anyone else, but my favourite takeout is Chinese food, and I love a good deep fried honey chilli chicken. I'm always looking for ways to recreate those flavours at home and this one really hits the nail on the head.

This is one of the most simple meals I've made, and the first time I made it, I'll admit, I didn't have high hopes. But the flavours are insane! This is a really delicious dinner, and super simple. Make sure to scoop out some of the sauce because it is really amazing over rice. And apart from all the other things that make this meal amazing, it also is basically made from kitchen staples - I always have these items on hand which means I can have this dinner whenever I want. Which is often, no shame.

Mmm, gotta sop up that sauuce

serves 2 with leftovers

Ingredients

• 3 medium chicken breasts
• 1 red onion, roughly chopped
• 1 red pepper, roughly chopped
• ½ red chilli, deseeded and chopped small
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• ¼ cup tomato pasatta
• ¼ cup runny honey
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp sesame seeds

Method

Chop the chicken breasts in half and line the bottom of the slow cooker. Sprinkle over the onion, pepper and chilli.

Mix together the garlic, pasatta, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, oregano and paprika until smooth. Pour this over the top.

Cook on low for 5 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

Remove the chicken and veg onto a plate, and pour over the sauce. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds and serve with rice or noodles.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Sorry about the hiatus, I was on my holidays eating obscene amounts of pizza, pasta and gelato.

BUT I'M BACK BABY. And with a corker of a meal.

I am excited about this post. It's nearly the weekend, and this is the perfect meal to pop in the slow cooker on Saturday morning, to give bountiful meals all weekend.

I love my slow cooker because it takes large hunks of meat that I would normally be super intimidated to cook with, and turns them into tender, flavourful meals with almost no effort.

And when you have that big plate of delicious meat, you can go ahead and cook up whatever you want with it! I got three meals out of this, it was basically the best week’s dinners of my life. None of the dinners took much time to do, and the meat was the star ingredient.

Day one, we had quesadillas:

Tortilla wrap, cheese, meat, veg, fold over and cook. Dream

Day two, we had nachos:

Tortilla chips, meat, veg, cheese. Sense a theme?

Day three, we had bbq mac and cheese:

For this, I mixed the pork with homemade BBQ sauce, topped with mac and cheese, and baked in the oven.

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Oh, hurry up Spring! Yes. technically it's March, but it's still cold.

This is the kind of dinner that is a great big hug on a plate. It’s healthy and wholesome and packed of lovely veggies. And the sauce! Amazing.

I really love finding new delicious things to make in my slow cooker. I made this a little while back. I put it in the slow cooker in the morning before getting into bed post-night shift. When I woke up at 6pm, my dinner was cooked and ready to eat, and that stuff matters when you’re running on 5 hours sleep – I could have cried with happiness!

This ticks all my boxes-  simple, quick (relatively speaking, the work/prep involved to make it only takes minutes), tasty and healthy. A total winner.

Ham and Lentil Slow Cooker Soup

All right, we are doubling DOWN on Christmas cooking now. We're knee deep in the season, people.

For me, Christmas is about eating with family and friends. I have a really awesome family. We meet up all the time when I’m home and have a great time together. They’re also full of good ideas that I can pass off as my own.

This soup is a prime example. My aunt makes the best soup. She is the queen of soup. One day she came to my nanny’s house with her massive 15L soup pot full of lentil soup and put it on the stove. When it was ready to be served, she went into it with a massive fork and pulled out a large joint of ham.

That’s right, she cooked the ham right there in the soup.

Absolute genius.

And I’ve shamelessly stolen the idea and made it into a slow cooker meal, something I can put on in the morning and then all of a sudden at dinner time a wonderful meal appears. I don't add any salt because the stock and gammon are salty enough, but a little bit of pepper works wonders.

Perfect dinner. My boyfriend doesn't think soup is enough of a meal for dinner, so he gets a grilled cheese with his.

Slow Cooker Chili Con Carne (and Cheeky Enchiladas!)

OH MY GOD. I've not posted in ages. I was on night shift and I just forgot to update. To make it up to my poor, neglected blog, I will post my absolute favourite recipe that I've made recently. I could eat this every day for the rest of my life and be happy. NO JOKE.

I have always been put off the recipes for chili that call for big hunks of braising meat, preferring to cook with the safety of my minced meat. The cooking times just seemed too daunting – I never start dinner so early!

However, with my trusty slow cooker on board, I don’t think that there is anything we can’t do. So the second thing I ever made in it was my absolute favourite meal in the world. I think a good chilli con carne is probably my favourite meal, because of the flavours and versatility. You can serve it with beans, with sweet potatoes, with rice, ensconced in a tortilla wrap, atop nachos, and I’ve even been known to smother it on a half baguette, top with cheese and bake in the oven! I mean, you could easily double this recipe and dine out on leftovers for days without getting bored!

Good old chili – is there anything you can’t do?

Side note – I’ve lamented about this before I’m sure, but my darling boyfriend doesn’t like chili. Now, I only realised this for real when we were a few years in, so I couldn’t just ditch him for his poor opinions. His only saving grace is that he likes enchiladas. What I have done here, therefore, is to whip up a chili for me (yum) and then make that into a filling for enchiladas for him. This is delicious on its own, but I’ve added the ingredients and method for if your loved ones are also wrong and hate chili.

Slow Cooker White Bean Chilli

It's not the prettiest bowl of food, but it is damn delicious!

I love chilli. I have always, and will always love chilli. I thought everyone felt the same. But then I shacked up with someone who DOESN’T LIKE IT. I assume he must be the only one. He’s certainly the first person I’ve met who doesn’t care for it. My mum and I could live off a big pot of chilli con carne for days!

I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried not making it spicy. I’ve tried not putting beans in, I’ve tried slow cooking it with hunks of stewing beef.. Nada. So, I decided I should take a different approach entirely. Let’s turn the notion of chilli on its head. Using typical chilli spices, with shredded chicken instead of beef mince, and with a white, creamy sauce instead of a dark and tomato-y one. And of course, I’m using my slow cooker.  The finished  product is a bit like a cross between a roasted chicken soup and a chilli con carne, and I’m well on board for that – comfort food and spice, a killer combination!

As an aside, apparently beans/no beans is a huge argument in the chilli world – I couldn’t imagine a decent chilli without some beans. This chilli could easily work with just one tin of beans, but I went with two because I'm a bean-fan. I used to hate beans, but I have grown to love them, they are great at bulking out a dinner and are so wholesome and filling. You still won’t catch me eating baked beans on toast, YUCK.

BBQ Slow Cooker Ribs

Hello and welcome to “Adventures in Slow Cooking!” .. is what I feel like in my house these days, ever since I unwrapped my slow cooker on Christmas day. I can’t help it, I love experimenting with my slow cooker!

And I also have to offer up some apologies - I've neglected the blog the last week or so because I have been super duper cramming for an exam. It is now thankfully over, and I am making the most of my new-found free time! Basically, while I wait nervously for the result, I take my mind off it by cooking some delicious new foods. Win win.

I have long been told that my (vegetarian!) aunt has a great knack for making ribs in the slow cooker, and this was one of the first things I was keen to make in mine. You can of course use a “bought” BBQ sauce and that would make this recipe incredibly quick and easy (even moreso than it already is), but where is the fun in that?! You could also substitute the beer for chicken stock, or even water.

I’ve adapted the BBQ sauce recipe from a Jamie Oliver one, and I really love the depth of flavour and spice in it, alongside a tempered sugary-ness. I cannot stand sweet and sour/tangy, and this is more smoky/spicy with a hint of fruity-sweetness. I’ll be using this exclusively for any BBQ sauce related needs I may have in the future.

I served mine with a bunch of sweet potato fries and the end product was DELISH.

serves 2 hungry people