Right before Easter my mom asked me if I could make a brisket for Easter lunch.  I said sure, then realized I had no brisket recipe.  I’d made a pot roast in the crockpot but never had I attempted a brisket in any fashion before.

I quickly began scouring the Internet for a recipe.  I’m not the biggest BBQ sauce fan; I think it tends to over power the intended flavor of the meat so I wanted to avoid recipes that included it.  As I searched I noticed that quite a few recipes call for “Liquid Smoke,” which just seemed weird to me so I dedcided to pass on any recipes requiring that element.  Believe it or not those two requirements eliminated most recipes.  But I stumbled upon one that looked really good.

I found the recipe I used on cdkitchen.com (I’d never heard of this site before), but I think it was a success.

Recipe is simple:
4 pounds fresh beef brisket
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspons paprika
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teasppoon garlic powder

Since we were eating around 1:30 pm and this recipe said to cook the brisket for 8 to 12 hours, I stayed up until midnight to put in the crockpot to let it cook while I slept.

Once again I got a great crockpot recipe from my friend Jenn and I am so excited about how easy and delicious this crockpot whole chicken recipe was.  The recipe she shared with me originally came from Weelicious.

All you need is a whole chicken, about 4 pounds, 1 lemon, a few sprigs of thyme and salt.

First I took the nasty stuff out of the inside of the chicken…I don’t even know what it is all called but I removed it.  Then the recipe said to cut the lemon in half, but I was afraid it wouldn’t fit very well so I cute it into fourths (wedges) and stuffed the pieces inside the chicken and added the thyme.  Then I had my sister sprinkle a good coating of both salt (I used regular but now I see the recipe called for kosher…oops) and pepper.

I put it in the crockpot and then sprinkled a little paprika on top.  I set the timer to 4 hour on high and let it cook.

For the first hour it smelled more like graham crackers than chicken which was, needless to say, weird.

After four hours it looked delicious!  But since it was getting late I didn’t put it in the oven for about 10 minutes as Jenn suggested to make the skin a little crispy but I’ll do it next time!

Yesterday I decided to try out a new crockpot recipe: Jerk Chicken. My sister in law Tiffany was coming over to hang with us so I figured it was the perfect time. Sadly I think I’ve now had my first crockpot fail. Though Beth & Tiffany were nice enough to say it still tasted good.

Monday night I cut up all the veggies to try and speed up the prep time yesterday morning. One of the ingredients was habanero and after my last experience with habanero I knew I needed gloves of some sort, so I got creative. Yes, those are grocery bags covering my hands and it worked! (thanks for taking the picture sis)

I loaded everything up in the crockpot, turned it on and headed to work. Then…about 2:00 tornadoes started rolling into Dallas. It made for quite an interesting afternoon. And while I was at work, the power at home went out…oh joy…best guess the power went out about 3 pm because by 5:20 when I got home the crockpot had almost cooled. Luckily the chicken still cooked; so that wasn’t how this recipe was a failure.

Weirdly even after being in the crockpot and cooking for 6 ish hours the chicken did look a lot like it did this morning when I first put it in:

And I really didn’t think it looked too appetizing….but I served it anyway…once I got it out of the crockpot and onto a plate it definitely looked better. It had some flavor and the chicken was moist (eww), but it wasn’t that spicy. Isn’t jerk chicken supposed to be spicy?

My favorite part of the meal was actually the zucchini that Tiffany made. After slicing it in half she drizzled it with olive oil and then sprinkled parmesan ontop. It was really good and I don’t really even like zucchini, but I’m trying to get better! I’m pretty sure this was a recipe from Pintrest.

The night definitely wasn’t an overall fail because I always have a good time with my sisters. We did of course have some wine. Beth picked up one I’d never had before . The Meritage from Sterling was really good!

Needless to say, I will not be making the Jerk Chicken recipe again and I’m bummed to have had a cooking failure with the crockpot.  It had never let me down before!

I got this pot roast recipe from my friend, the beautiful woman behind the camera at Sugar Photography, and as soon as Red Wine was mentioned as an ingredient…I was sold, of course!  Plus the pot roast recipe was super simple, here is all I used:

Well, minus the broccoli, that was just a side.  I did toy with the idea of putting the broccoli in the crockpot but decided it would probably get too soggy after a day in red wine.

My cousin Chase keeps cooking pot roast in his crockpot down in H-town, and he let me in on a little secret….you can buy potatoes in a can!  Who knew!  Definitely makes throwing ingredients in the crockpot in the am much easier.  Chase also suggested that I get a Sirloin pot roast, but I couldn’t even find a regular pot roast without going to multiple grocery stores, so I had to settle for a chuck roast.

Here is the recipe:

1 Cup any red wine, I used my left over BR Cohn wine I’d opened over the weekend, poured it in the cropckpot.

Next I salt & pepper both sides of the pot roast and put it in the crockpot.

Potatoes, this was a big pot roast so I did two cans.

Carrots, I just put as many as would fit

Lipton Soup mix, this sould be poured on top of everything, I however poured it in the wine, so luckily my sis could help me out and poured most of a 2nd pack on top.

Doesn’t it look pretty?

I let it all cook in there for about 9 hours, because that was as fast as I could get home.  And let me just tell you….my house smelled AMAZING!  The meat was so tender and delicious!

Though I do have to say, I wish I had found a less fatty meat.  You can see in the pictures from before the pot roast was cooked how much fat there is.  When I ate it I could pull it off, but the left overs…let’s just say that was a bit more than I could handle.

I brought it for lunch the next day to reheat and couldn’t quite get over how the liquid had coagulated.  So for me this was definitely not a “leftovers” type meal.  I’ll have to get a sirlion pot roast next time and see if the end result is the same.

To keep my mom happy and have a green vegetable, I steamed the broccoli.

I can’t wait to try this again and see how it turns out with a different cut of meat.  Thanks for all the recipe suggestion Jenn & some Chase for all the helpful hints!

The other night I was in the mood to cook something. Of course it was about 6:30 and way too late to be creating something complicated for dinner. But, all the same, I started perusing the Tasty Kitchen web site and came across the recipe for Parmesan Garlic Chicken in the crockpot.

Once again this was an awesome crockpot meal!  It does require some prep work the night before because you marinade the chicken over night in all the goodies below:

I do always have a hard time knowing what dry white wine I should buy for cooking, but ended up going with a Pinot Grigio and then just picked an inexpensive one.  I couldn’t help but think, how could anything marinating over night in wine be bad?

I ended up doing 3 chicken breasts because that’s what came in the pack. This recipe called for 4 chicken breasts but to be honest, I’m not sure how there would be enough marinade for 4 breasts, the marinade seemed to barely coat the 3 breasts I was using and next time I might make it bigger.

When it came time to put it in the crock pot there was hardly any liquid for the chicken to sit in, but you’ll notice in the recipe it doesn’t call for additional liquid.  All the same, I added more Pinot Grigio just to feel better about leaving it all day while I was at work.

I loved how awesome my house smelled when I walked in on Tuesday!  The garlic and basil aroma was delicious!

You’ll notice on the recipe from Tasty Kitchen, that you can cook it on low for up to 8 hours.  I think I ended up cooking it more like 9 hours…and that was bit much.  I wish I’d been home to keep an eye on this one and see how it cooked.  I think that because I had to leave it for so long the chicken got a little dryer than it normally would have. However the flavor was still delicious and the meal turned out very good. 

Also…I just cooked the entire package of Orzo, I know the recipe calls for only a cup, but Orzo isn’t something I normally cook with so I just went for it.  Sadly my local grocery store doesn’t have a Whole Wheat Orzo option so I just had to go with regular ol’ Orzo.  Since I did the whole box of Orzo, I went a head and cooked the whole bag of frozen broccoli.  Out of laziness I just cooked the brocolli in with th Orzo so I didn’t dirty another pan.  Plus I hate microwaving frozen broccoli, some how I always end up burning it.

Once I’d cooked the Orzo and broccoli and then tossed in the chicken  I couldn’t believe how much this made!  Beth and I both had dinner on Tuesday night and then there was still enough for 3 very generous meals.

I’ve now tried this meal reheated and it was still delicious.  Maybe it’s the tenderness of the chicken from slow cooking that makes it reheatable, I’m really not sure.  But I LOVE that this meal is good left over.

Since I had left over Pinot Grigio I went ahead and had glass with dinner and you know what it actually wasn’t bad!

A couple weeks back, during the cleanse, I was determined to find a meal to prepare in my crockpot.  I had been so excited to get my crockpot from Beth for Christmas, but then got way too busy to use it and next thing I knew we were doing the cleanse and I was afraid I’d have to wait even longer to use it.  Until I stumbled upon this recipe fro “Slow-Cooker Mexican Chicken.”  It fit all of the requirements of the cleanse and seemed really easy, so I decided to give it a try!

I’m a big fan of spice, so I decided to add a few things to this recipe including: 2 jalapenos, a bell pepper and an Anaheim chili.

I did all the chopping the night before so that I could just throw everything in the next day.

Needless to say the next morning I was entirely too giddy about cooking my first crockpot meal!  I got to work and was telling my officemates about my recipe and the immediately told me that I was going to have a smoky, burned mess when I got home because I didn’t add any water to the crockpot.  I was freaked out!

What if I got home and this:

was inedible?  Fortunately that was not the case!  Look how good it turned out:

I was so relieved and excited that not only did the meal turn out, but it was SO good!  I had picked up a bag of Uncle Ben’s Instant Brown Rice and we had a cleanse approved  meal.

This probably isn’t the most picture, but this is what it looked like on the plate:

If you clicked on the recipe link above, you’ll notice my chicken has a lot more “flair” to it, if you will (not sure why since you can’t really even see the additional peppers I added), than the picture from Tosca Reno’s post.  Maybe my small jar of salsa was bigger than the one she used?

I have no made this meal 3 times and each time it has been a little different.  Second time I didn’t add in all the extra peppers but I did add in some garlic powder and onion powder.  The first two times I added in frozen diced onions because I already had them.  And all three times, because I love it, I added cilantro.

You can definitely make this dish your own! A twitter follower told me they added avocado to it.  I also saw a very similar recipe posted elsewhere that included added cheese.  So be sure to have fun with it!

Do you use a slow cooker? What are your favorite recipes, post a link or share a recipe in the comment section I am anxious to try more crockpot receipes!