Goulash

Normally on Easter, I like to have a delicious boiled ham dinner made by my mom.  Sadly, that hasn't happened for the last several years, what with my folks living several hundred miles away and all.  Rather than make that myself, which would result in about a ton of leftover ham (you need a good sized ham for it to turn out really well), I decided to try something new: goulash (which also resulted in a ton of leftovers).  This is another slow cooker recipe, which means the only very busy parts happen at the beginning, assembling the ingredients, and at the end to finish it off.  The middle part involves mostly just hanging around playing through the fantastic Bioshock Infinite.

What you'll need for this recipe includes: 1 1/2-2 lbs stew meat, but into 3/4-inch cubes; 1/2 C beef broth; 3 Tbs paprika; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp caraway seeds; 1/4 tsp pepper; 3 onions, chopped; 2 cloves of garlic, chopped; 1 14.5-oz can whole tomatoes (undrained); 1/4 C cold water; 2 Tbsp flour; 6 C cooked noodles.

Goulash fixin's!

In a large skillet, cook the meat over medium heat until it's browned (about 5 minutes or so).  Drain and transfer to the slow cooker.  Now mix in everything else except for the water, flour, and noodles.  Break up the tomatoes a bit with a fork, too (and watch out, because they will squirt you!).

Put the cover on and set to low heat for 8-9 hours.  At the end of that time, shake up the flour and water in a tightly covered container, and stir the mixture in to the rest of the stuff.  Re-cover and turn the heat up to high for 10-20 minutes, until the whole thing thickens up.  While that's going on, cook the noodles.  Serve the goulash over the noodles, and you're done!

Chuck Roast with Cranberry Gravy

It was rather chilly today, which made it a perfect day for another slow cooker recipe!  This is incredibly easy and doesn't really require that many ingredients.  What you'll need are: a 2 1/2 lb chuck roast (or beef brisket); 1/2 tsp salt; 1/4 tsp pepper; 1 (14 oz) can whole cranberry sauce; 1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce; 1 medium onion, chopped; and 1 tsp dry mustard.

All you need for a really tasty dinner!

Trim any extra fat off of the roast, rub it with the salt and pepper, and put it in your slow cooker.  Now mix together the rest of the ingredients.

Not really the tastiest looking concoction in the world

Pour it into the slow cooker over the beef.

The "before" picture

Cover and set the cooker to the low setting and leave it alone for 8-10 hours, or until the beef is tender.

The "after" picture

Now just slice up the beef (or just pull it apart--it's super tender), cook up some potatoes and vegetables, serve with the sauce left in the cooker, and you have dinner!

Dinner!

Chicken Stroganoff Pot Pie

One of the best things I ever bought for my kitchen is my slow cooker.  Unfortunately, I don't use it nearly as often as I'd like since it requires me to plan out what I want for dinner more than an hour ahead and most of my decisions great and small tend to be made randomly and on very short notice.  Today seemed like a good slow cooker day, though, since I flipped through my Betty Crocker cookbook early enough to decide what I wanted and get the ingredients from the store and actually have it cooked at a normal dinner time.

For the chicken stroganoff pot pie, you'll need 1 envelope of chicken gravy mix; 1 10.5 oz can of chicken broth; 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts; 1 16 oz bag frozen stew vegetables (carrots, onions, potatoes, and celery), thawed; 1 4.5 oz jar sliced mushrooms; 1/2 C sour cream; 1 Tbsp flour; 1 1/2 C Bisquick; 4 green onions, chopped; 1/2 C milk.  The cookbook recipe also calls for 1 C frozen peas, thawed, but I left them out.  Who likes peas?  Not me!

I like that Farm Fresh very clearly labels them "stew vegetables" so there's no confusion.

Cut up the chicken so it's in nice little bite-sized pieces, about an inch long or thereabouts.

Mmmmm....salmonella....

In your slow cooker, whisk together the gravy mix and the chicken broth.  Then add in the chicken, stew vegetables, and mushrooms. 

Put on the cover, set your cooker to "low" and sit there watching it for the next 4-5 hours.  Or go do something else, like your taxes, cleaning your apartment, catching up on Downton Abbey, and/or saving the Capitol Wasteland from super mutants and the Enclave.  Whatever floats your boat.  When the time's up, mix the sour cream and flour together and then stir into the chicken mix.

Put the cover back on and turn up the cooker to "high".  This time it's only going to cook for 20 minutes.  In the meantime, chop up your green onions and, in a medium bowl, combine them with your Bisquick (and the, ugh, peas if you're so inclined).  Stir in the milk.  Once the 20 minutes is up, drop spoonfuls of the dough on top of the chicken.

No peas here!

Put the cover back on and continue to cook on "high" for another 45-50 minutes, or until you can put a toothpick in your dumplings and it comes out clean.  And that's it!  You've got yourself a nice hearty dinner full of (non-pea) vegetables, so it counts as "healthy" in my book.  It also warms up pretty well, so if you're a lonely shell of a human being like myself who only has themselves to cook for, you've got plenty of leftovers!  Awesome!

I've been smelling this cook all day and let me tell you, it was worth the wait!