A few of my friends here are recently married as well and a couple of them have had some cooking dilemas.
This post is dedicated to Aly and Sara, with my hopes that this no fail recipe full of possibilities helps them out! I reccomend getting it going first thing in the morning to have everything good to go by dinnertime!
Start out with your crockpot. We got this beauty as a wedding gift! Many people have them sitting around in their garages/ pantries as well going madly underused. I put mine on high and start filling it up.
The best base to any crock pot stew or roast is potatoes! A nice solid filler especially when you have a husband who eats as much as mine does. Plus theyre a good newlywed food because theyre cheap!
So are carrots. Put lots of those in too. I put the carrots and potatoes on the bottom because they take the longest to cook!
When I peel them I peel into the sink but the scoup it out and put it into the trash. Garbage disposals are good for little bits but you dont want the horrible lesson of having to replace one of those suckers.
Then I toss in one of these no fail flavor packets. This one had kind of a kick. Another good one is a Liptons French Onion Soup packet! Its sort of like cheating, but the flovor is worth it, especially if your intimidated by seasoning your own food. I also added almost four spoons of Worchestershire sauce. That stuff is good in almost anything! Then if you're making stew I fill it about two thirds of the way with water, or until all the veggies are covered.
Then brown the stew meat (that means cook it on high so the outside gets nice and cooked looking and the inside is less cooked.) Meat that goes into stew doesnt have to be as tender as your favorite steak because the long cook time of the crock pot should tenderize your meat making it softer and fall apart as you eat it.
Luke prefers more meat in his meals. I used a pound here, but had put half of it in the crock pot before I remembered to take a picture.
Your stew should look about like this:
Leave it for 4-5 hours and it should look like this:
This is when I like to toss in some frozen veggies. (Theyre less expensive, you can buy them in bulk, and they dont go bad as quickly.)
Serve with some fabulous sour dough garlic bread and youre good to go! Yum!
You can change this recipe up however you want! Add other vegitables, use a beef base instead of a packet. Mix it up! Let me know how it goes!
I also am seeking your advice!
Luke looooooves his Costco muffins, but you leave one muffin out here, and it's rock hard in 20 min! Which means even the smallest crack in the wrapper leads to crusty muffins. Do you have any advice or tips on the storage of these beasts? Is there a product that you find especially helpful for this? I feel wastful putting each into it's own ziplock bag. Especially since we know this is a product we'll continue to purchase for a long time to come.
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