I love crockpot cooking, but the one thing I struggled with for quite some time, is that I simply wouldn’t think about it ahead of time. Around 3pm it would occur to me that a particular meal would have been perfect for crockpot cooking. Unfortunately by then it was usually to late. Over the years I’ve gotten more and more into meal planning, and at least one dish each week comes from my crockpot. But you don’t have to plan every meal ahead of time to take advantage of crockpot cooking. Here are a few of my best tips to plan your crockpot meals.
Declare A Crockpot Day
Decide on one day of the week and make it “crockpot day”. In other words you will know that on Wednesday for example you will always make a crockpot meal. Getting out the crockpot in the morning on that particular day and getting dinner started in the slowcooker will quickly become second habit and you don’t have to worry about forgetting to plan ahead anymore.
Note To Self
After you get back from the store with a particular roast or whatever else you decided you want to cook in the crockpot, write yourself a note as a reminder. The writing down part itself will help you remember (similar to how you know most of what you need to buy after you write a shopping list, even if you leave it sitting on the kitchen table – and yes, I’ve done that plenty of times). I also still stick the note on my fridge … just in case.
Postpone
If everything else fails and you forgot to put your ingredients in the crock pot, consider postponing the meal until the next day. Of course that only works if you have something else you can prepare the conventional way instead. Just take a look around your fridge and pantry and then decide.
I hope you will start to make your slowcooker one of your favorite kitchen appliances. You just can’t beat the ease of use and all the time you’re saving because you don’t have to stand around the stove stirring pots. I invite you to take a look at my newest ebook – Crockpot Cooking Made Simple. It’s full of recipes, but also plenty of tips for choosing and caring for a slowcooker and my favorite – how to convert recipes into crockpot versions.
Sometimes, but not always, you can save the day with your pressure cooker if you forget to start dinner in the morning. Pot roast, beef stew, country style pork ribs – things like that work great. Pressure cookers are not as popular now as they were before the advent of the microwave, but mine has been a life saver on many occasions.
I LOVE my crockpot. Always have–we would have starved to death as young college students without it. My latest new use for the crockpot is homemade yogurt. Totally easy, and the yogurt is SOOO much tastier than even the best store yogurt. And much, much, much cheaper!!!
Do you have a recipe for the homemade yogurt? I”ve never done this in a crockpot
and would like to try.
Thanks
I’d like to try it too!
Have you ever done this before–so simple on top of the stove–heat milk, add starter and cover the pan with towels and leave for 12-24 hrs. Will give specific directions if wanted.
Heather I to would like your recipe for crockpot yogurt. It is so expensive these days and I really like it. Thank You
Could I please get the recipe for the crockpot yogurt, too? Thank you.
would love to have your recipe for crockpot yogurt..please and thanks. Marlene
My slow cooker cooks boneless chicken breasts on high in a couple of hours. I am not a patient person and almost never use any other setting. My favorite beef roast recipe is just the meat, a can of cream of mushroom soup and an envelope of onion soup mix.
Beans are quick and easy, too. Sort, rinse, and cover with water (an inch or so above level of beans). Cook on high and they’re done in 3-4 hours usually, no soaking required. This summer I have been using my slow cooker to brown ground beef since it doesn’t heat the house up. We live in Alabama and our air conditioner struggles in this heat so my slow cooker is one of my favorite tools!
I put my slow cooker out on the back porch in the summer because I do not want to heat up the house.
Works great!
Most things I cook in the slow cooker are done within 4 hours, and some things cook in less time. Try using the high setting on your slow cooker.
I usually only cook one thing at a time in my slow cooker (example: not meat & potatoes together). It seems easier to steam veggies in the microwave and stir them in with the meat after cooking. Meats and veggies often need different amounts of cooking times and need to be started at different times or risk mushy veggies by the time the meat is done.
One of the tricks is to put the meat below the veggies. however I almost always start with a bed of onions for savory dishes. It seems that – that ways gets their flavor infused into everything. I love me some onions!!!
And a trick with noodles is to only add them in about 15-20 minutes before I serve my soups created in the CP. Otherwise they are too mushy.
I am onion junkie, too!
A thought on having to postpone your CP meal. I have created my meal the night before and left it in the ceramic part in the refer then put it in the base in the morning to come home to a wonderful meal.
I don’t know why I’ve never thought of that before, I’m so glad you shared! I usually forget in the mornings because our schedule is so busy, but I can definitely handle the night before. Thanks!
I love crockpots so much that I own 8 of them, ranging from the smallest (4 cupper I think) to a roasting pan that can be turned way down. If it were not for my crockpots I am just sure we would have been either starved to death or even more over weight because of the ‘fast food’ we would have ate. Just about anything can be done in a crockpot, it takes no hands on watching, makes your house smell wonderful, uses way less energy then the oven, and most of all after a busy day (we are farmers) I do not have to come home to cook something all I may need to do is add a salad that I most likely had cut up that morning anyway.
The standard roast and potatoes is not all you have to cook and not all things will end up mushy at the end of the day. I use an outlet timer to cut on/off my crockpot so I have a warm meal but that is not turned to a soup consistancy (lasgna turned to soup actually tasted really good lol) because we were away from the house for 12 hours. When I use the timer because of extreme hours I make sure that my food is either frozen solid or almost so that it leaves less time for the food to be in the danger zone for bacteria. Not all of my recipies have come out Betty Crocker great, but even the mess ups are eatable!!
Try visiting http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ for a site with tons and tons of recipies using the crockpot. It is a blog of a lady that spent one year using her crockpots everyday to feed her family. Sometimes my family thinks I may be trying to copy her lol.
I would love to have the yogurt recipe. Do you also have recipe for kefer?
I second Debra’s recommendation of that crockpot blog. Lots of good recipes and funny stories. Joyce, there’s a recipe there for making yogurt. I’ve tried it a few times, but once I used ultrapasteurized milk and it didn’t thicken. Be sure to use just regular pasteurized, not ultra.
I use my crock pot at least 3 times evry week. If making a beef or pork roast, I usualy always add potatoes at the same time as it is starting to cook and never end up with mushy potatoes. I do not use baby reds for this, only hearty Russets and only halve them and place them on the bottom of crock pot, this way all the meat juices infuse them. I never though, cook anything on high…meat or desserts, I find it cooks to fast and mine doesn’t switch to warm when done cooking-I wish I had one that did.
I make a few desserts in my crock pot as well….my family loves them in winter especially, to have a hot dessert waiting when dinner is over.
I have wanted t try making yogurt in it….I think it might be my next project.
I also visit the 365crockpot blog for inspiration….a great website for crock pot users.
I love to use my crockpot AND bread machine at the same time, especially in the wintertime, when it’s cold and dreary outside. I prep as much as possible the night before, so in the morning I only have to pull stuff out of the fridge, dump it into the crockpot, plug it in. Then load up the bread machine and set the timer on it, so when I get home from work in the evening, I’m greeted by lovely fragrance of hot homemade bread and hearty stew or soup. Heaven!
This household would come to a screeching halt without our crockpots. Yep, there’s more than one crockpot in the kitchen and every day they are used.
One thing I never see mentioned about crockpots is traveling with your crockpots and coffee pot. On long car trips the crockpot and coffee pot go along with us. If it’s a really long trip where I know we will be very late getting to a motel or campground, the crockpot is hooked up to an inverter and the crockpot does the cooking in the car during the trip. Make sure it can’t be turned over when anyone exits or enters the car, or tip over during a sudden stop. (I’ve never had a crockpot “accident” in the car but take precautions anyway.)
In the motel rooms, the crockpots and coffee pot are used every single day. (You would be surprised what you can cook in a coffee pot too!) I remember one year a bad winter storm kept us caught in a hotel for a week or longer and the food I packed and those crockpots and coffee pot kept those tummys full and nerves calmed.
You would be surprised how much money you save over the road, if you do your own cooking along the way. Those inverters are about $30 and are very much worth the money to this bunch.
If I had to give a quick answer to what I couldn’t do without in my kitchen, it would be my crockpots, coffee pot and bread machines.
Crock pots are great to use when you’re camping too! We’ve used ours while tenting and in our trailer… start it up in the morning plugged into your site outlet and just let it run all day…everything is ready (or almost, like adding noodles to the pasta sauce or whatever) when you get back in in the evening and you don’t have to mess around in the non-existent kitchen space or worry about open flames in the fire ring AND on the table top too!
hello Ally where I camp is no outlet, some time not even regular facilyties very ruagery and I love it maybe one day I’ll will camp where is outlet facilyties I’m getting there in age prutty quick hahaha!!!
what are some of the things that you cook in the coffee pot?
I do this too. On our latest trip to Florida, even though it was a timeshare with full kitchen, I still brought my crockpot and griddle and we ate a feast fit for royalty!
To Terrie in Alabama, re heating the house too much in summer: summer calls for my crock pot in the kitchen, and convection toaster oven in the garage. Mine will take a large dish, so anything done in the kitchen oven can be done there, even cakes. Happy (cool) cooking and baking! PS….I love this website!
I’ve been looking for a good toaster oven for just this reason. It gets in the 120s on occasion and is routinely above 100 degrees in Las Vegas and I find myself buying baked goods from the store to avoid taxing my AC.
What kind of toaster oven do you have?
I have a DeLonghi which I swear by!!! I have had it over 25+ years and it’s still perfect!!! Temps are correct always. It’s the best!!
I have had a Black and Decker for about that long also and use it all the time. The door recently broke and I have to prop it up. My husband said something about throwing it away, and I told him not until he bought me another one just as big. I can cook almost anything in it. Between the toaster oven and crock pots, I hardly ever use my stove in the summer in South Arkansas.
I found my toaster oven on ebay. It is a good old betty crocker.
I have come to love ramen noodles , with brown gravy mix , some olive oil , mushrooms and some
deli sliced roast beef. Too easy.
A trick that has helped me and made using the crockpot even easier is this. Brown all of your ground meat at once, let it cool a bit and then divide it into small zip lock bags and freeze. When the recipe starts out with “Brown a pound of ground beef…” you have that part already done and you just throw the rest of the ingredients into the pot. Saves a ton of time on a busy morning and you only have to wash the browning pan once! This was a terrific time saver when I was a working mom!
Great advice–I do this whenever a recipe calls for ground beef. I cook up a ton of it (5 lbs usually) and then divide into ziploc bags by 1 lb each. Really, you can’t go wrong with this method because there are 5 meals waiting in your freezer.
I LOVE my crock-pot! Thanks for posting this article. I think everyone should give it a try. Your life will certainly be simplified. Make anything from meatloaf, chili, soups, roast, even pumpkin pie pudding and Chex mix! Explore all your options! Happy Crock-pot cooking:)
Tip for flavorful meats for both crock pot cooking, stir frys, etc. I will fire up the BBQ and do an assortment of meats… pork loin roasts (or slices), chicken breasts, beef, hamburger patties. Or I will BBQ an extra batch of whatever we are having for dinner that night from the grill. I only BBQ long enough to get a good BBQ flavor, not to fully cook. Then I package, label and freeze according to use. (use within 2-3 months) The BBQ flavor adds so much to the taste of the dish, and this is very convenient. BBQ hamburger patties are easy to break up and use as regular hamburger in your dish.
Recently purchased the Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient favorites Comforting Slow-Cooker recipes by Phyllis Pellman Good. Use my crock pot frequently and this book has a lot of ideas with only 5 ingredients.
I have two and I use theme all the time. Good for rise pizza dough too!!
i gave our daughter an old one i was going to throw out. glad i did not. i needed it when i purchased a newer one and it broke only after a year! Then i did the smart thing and went to goodwill and found a big one with lovely green ivory on it for 15! It has worked well ever since. I use my daughters for yogurt.
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I would like to have your yogurt recipe as well. Thanks