Well folks I
am halfway through my first month of the Delicious Dozen challenge so I thought
it was about time that I updated you on my progress so far. Also, I heard on
the radio that this weekend in January is when most people give up on their New
Year’s resolutions and I wanted to let you know that I am definitely not giving
up!
As you know
the first month of my challenge has been to learn to cook slow cooker recipes
and it is definitely more of a
learning curve than the baking challenge was. To kick start the challenge I bought
a nice looking slow cooker recipe book at the start of the month but to be
honest I haven’t cooked a single thing from it yet! Reason being I have
discovered that a lot of slow cooker recipes are quite fiddly, they tell you to
brown the meat, boil the liquid, cook the veg or just soak things like beans on
the hob before putting them in the cooker. This just seems to defeat the
purpose to me, I thought you could just throw things in and leave it!! If you
have to cook things on the hob first why don’t you just cook them on the hob
all together and save hours of waiting! Anyway, I have had to do quite a bit of
searching online to find ‘throw and go’ recipes but thankfully the wonderful
world of Pinterest has come up trumps and directed me to a lots of interesting
recipes. I have now tried five different recipes (with a few tweaks) and with
mixed success...
I thought I would just
attach the links instead of writing out all the details or this post will be ridiculously
long and boring to read!!
- Steak Pie
In Scotland
it is traditional to have steak pie on New Year’s day so I thought it would be
a great opportunity to use the slow cooker and start the year as we mean to go
on. Now I LOVE steak pie, well in particular my mum’s steak pie (I sometimes
think mums have secret mum spices which go into their cooking to make things so
delicious) so I was excited to try this recipe. It was...OK... maybe good but
it was just a bit bland. To be fair I didn’t have any garlic powder but I think
I should have just been a bit more liberal with all the herbs and spices. I am
also not sure about potatoes in a steak pie? Anyway, I think the idea was good
but it might not be the best recipe but there are plenty more out there for me
to try.
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| Getting started.... |
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| Looks good but it was just a bit average. |
- Maple glazed ham
So, as I have
told you before I have a bit of trouble with tsp and tbsp’s and that happened
yet again with this recipe (I put in two tbsp’s of ginger instead of 2tsps... ooops)
but thankfully it didn’t seem to matter. I read some of the comments on the
recipe and took some other cooks’ advice by reducing the amount of cloves I put
in. I also took the orange peel out after a few hours because the smell wasn’t
very pleasant (I think it smelled a bit like sick... yuck!) Anyway, after all
of that the end result was AMAZING!! I could hardly lift the ham out of the
slow cooker because it was just falling apart, in fact the first time I tried
to I dropped the ham back into the slow cooker, splattering liquid all over the
kitchen!! Haha.
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- Whole Roast Chicken
Three words
A-MAZ-ING!!! Seriously delicious, the meat just fell off the bone. I did make a
few changes to the recipe, mainly because I didn’t have cayenne pepper, onion
powder, thyme and white pepper and I also don’t like celery (who does??) so I
just put sweet potatoes and normal potatoes in instead. I prepared the veg the
night before and then got the chicken ready in the morning before I went to
work (it took about 15-20mins). We turned the slow cooker on low at about 8am
and when we look it out at 6.30pm is was perfect. It was sooooo nice to come
home to the delicious chicken smell and to be able to sit down to a full roast
dinner at 6.45pm on a school night!!
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| The meat was so tender it just fell off the bone so the chicken didn't look very appealing but it was SOOOO good. |
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| Good looking roast for a school night huh! |
- Stuffed Peppers
This was
something a bit different for us because I don’t think I have ever made stuffed
peppers before but they were really nice. The meat was quite like taco filling
and it made six peppers which was enough for two full meals for us. The only
thing was (yet again) it could have had more flavour. I am really just starting
to learn how to cook properly with herbs and spices so I can’t quite gauge the
amount yet but I think in slow cooker terms more is better!
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| I followed the serving suggestion and had the peppers with salad and fresh crusty bread...yum! |
- Porrdge
It is cold Saturday
morning and I thought it would be lovely to wake up to a hearty breakfast and it was! I put the porridge on
last night and woke up to a warm bowl of loveliness this morning. I only used
three cups of liquid (two water and one milk) because some comments on other
recipes have said slow cooker porridge can be quite thin and watery. I also added
dried cranberries which were a nice because they puff up and become sweet. I
will definitely be trying this one again, I think I would make it all with milk
rather than water to make it creamer. I would also add some sugar at the start
of cooking because I like my porridge sweet but this recipe is a good basic porridge
that you can add anything to. My husband Dave was loving it as his post-run
breakfast.
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| Cooking the porridge in a bowl with a lid on keeps it moist and stops it burning when you cook it for so long. |
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| Warm cranberry yumminess! |
Lesson from
bite one of the delicious dozen – seasoning! I am finding my way around the
herbs and spices section of the supermarket and I think if in doubt I need to
throw caution to the wind and just risk it by adding more!
For the second
half of the month I already have a few recipes in mind, the first being pulled
pork which has been a big favourite of mine since I lived in Atlanta five years
ago. I also need to get my baking fix so I am going to try some sort of cake or
bake in the slow cooker.
Happy
seasoning x Linds x
P.S. As you
probably expected I have still been baking! I know, I have a problem. I did a
great gluten free lemon cake and I tried a different cornbread muffin recipe from
the Hummingbird bakery cook book which was seriously yummy.
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