Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (20 page)
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Authors: Miss South
I love macaroni cheese. It’s the taste of simple childhood dinners where delicious food was the reason to gather round the table together and have a proper family dinner. Served piping hot from the oven with tomatoes on the top, it was a real favourite of Mister North and I when we were wee. It was also the source of a family joke that makes me giggle to this day, when my dad once made it and forgot the cheese. The laughter that provoked just made it taste all the better.
This is a simple way to make macaroni cheese for a large number of people (or those with big appetites) without all the various stages and pots and pans it usually requires. Don’t be alarmed by the use of evaporated milk. It simply thickens the regular milk in the slow cooker without the sauce splitting.
SERVES 4 COMFORTABLY
350g cheese, grated
500g dried macaroni (not wholewheat or quick cook)
2 tablespoons cornflour
1 teaspoon mustard powder
¼ teaspoon white pepper
400ml unsweetened evaporated milk
600ml full-fat milk
I take a leaf from Mister North’s book here and use a mixture of cheeses, usually about 200g Cheddar, 100g mozzarella and 50g Parmesan. You could simply use all Cheddar, but it needs to be quite mature to add flavour. I don’t add salt to my macaroni cheese as I find the cheese salty enough. Your taste may vary.
Place the macaroni into the slow-cooker crock and sprinkle the cornflour over it all. Stir to coat it as evenly as possible. Add the mustard powder and the pepper.
Mix the evaporated milk with the full-fat milk and pour both over the macaroni. Scatter the grated cheese over it all and mix well so it is evenly distributed.
Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on low for 2 hours. I often set my timer to turn the slow cooker on later in the day so I come home to bubbling hot macaroni cheese with no effort.
Serve the macaroni cheese immediately. I get my tomato fix with a splodge of the Easy Tomato Ketchup from
here
. There are never leftovers.
Note:
If you’d like to make this for two people, simply halve the amounts and follow the same cooking time.
This is a breakfast with a bit of bite and a lot of luxury. The recipe was given to my mum about twenty years ago when she had been unwell. She recovered completely and quickly and barely a month has gone by without a batch of this granola being made. I think that tells you how wholesome and healthy this is.
You need the oats, sesame seeds and wheatgerm as the basis, but you can adapt it anyway you like beyond that. Add nuts, seeds, dried fruit or even chocolate chips. No matter what you go for it works out much more affordable than the stylish boxes of granola you can buy. Serve this crunchy granola with yoghurt or milk or stir a handful into porridge. I rather like it dry as a snack in front of the telly. One batch is never enough.
MAKES AROUND 750G
85g jumbo oats
250g porridge oats
30g wheatgerm
45g sesame seeds
45g pumpkin seeds
45g sunflower seeds
45g flaked coconut
100g nuts of your choice (I favour broken Brazil nuts)
pinch of salt
120ml sunflower oil
120ml clear honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g dried fruit (added as the granola cools)
Measure out your oats, wheatgerm and sesame seeds into your slow-cooker crock. If you prefer you can use all jumbo oats or all smaller porridge oats, but I think this mix is the best texture.
Add in the seeds, coconut and nuts and mix well. If you go for hazelnuts and linseeds for example instead, use the same proportions so you get a spoonful of everything each time. Sprinkle with the pinch of salt.
Heat the oil and honey in a small pan on the hob over a medium heat until it is completely combined. Add the vanilla extract and pour this oil and honey mix into the slow-cooker crock and stir well. It will look like it isn’t enough liquid for the dry mix, but keep mixing and it will coat it all perfectly without needing to add more.
Cover the top of the crock with kitchen roll and put the lid on. Cook on low for 2 hours. Remove the kitchen roll, stir well and give it another 30 minutes cooking.
Remove from the heat and spread out on a tray to cool. The granola will feel soft when it comes out of the slow cooker, but crisps as it cools, so don’t be tempted to cook it longer to get it crunchy or it will burn. It should be a golden toasted colour.
Cool for an hour and then put into an airtight container to keep it crisp. If you move it carefully, you can keep it in little clusters of granola or you can break it up depending which texture you prefer. You’ll get really good at knowing how you like it as you’ll make this granola repeatedly.
Pub quiz fact:
Granola is cooked to be crunchy. Muesli is kept raw to be soft.
Pretty much the first thing everyone asks me when they hear about my slow-cooking skills is ‘Can you make porridge in the slow cooker?’ The answer is yes, but just not the way you thought.
I had visions of putting oats and milk in the crock, turning it on to low and waking up to perfect piping hot porridge in the morning while avoiding the evils of washing the porridge pan. Instead I got burnt, gluey oats that tasted of powdered milk and failure. My brother experienced the same, unable to replicate our Scottish father’s skills with the crock and a bag of oats.
Then I started, slightly obsessively, reading about the perfect porridge and my eye was drawn to the word ‘porringer’. Not just a quaint term one hears in nursery rhymes, this is a double boiler or bain marie for cooking porridge slowly, using indirect heat to make it creamy and prevent it boiling. I had my slow-cooker porridge method…
Per person you need:
½ cup of porridge or jumbo oats (not the kind that come in sachets for microwaving)
1 cup water
decent pinch of sea salt
I usually make my porridge half milk and half water on the stove, but this slow-cooked method makes water-based porridge incredibly creamy and you really don’t need the milk. It can actually taste a bit like coffee creamer if you cook the milk for ages, so I stick to just water. Don’t skip the salt. It really enhances the flavour of the oats and makes the porridge even tastier.
Put a 1.2-litre pudding basin in the slow-cooker crock. Put the oats and the water into it. Add the salt and mix well. You should be able to get up to four portions in this basin at a time, allowing you to make breakfast for several people.
Pour boiling water into the slow-cooker crock until it comes about two-thirds of the way up the side of the basin. Put a lid on the basin and put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on low for at least 5 hours. I like it best at about 7 hours, but it’ll work if you leave it up to 12 hours.
As long as you put the lid back on the slow cooker, people can help themselves at different times once the porridge is cooked, allowing you to feed lots of people with only one porridge pot to wash. Three bears optional…
Vegetables get overlooked a little bit in the slow cooker, playing second fiddle to meat and pulses. If you pick the right kinds of veg and handle them well, you’ll be pleasantly surprised just how well you can cook them in the slow cooker.
By a strange quirk, root vegetables actually take longer to cook in the slow cooker than meat. They need to be chopped small and to an even size to allow them to be cooked alongside meat or poultry so that they are ready at the same time. I peel all mine to aid the cooking process further. Don’t use too much liquid to prevent them becoming waterlogged as you still want them to have texture despite the long cooking times.
Choose the right vegetables for your need. Sweet potatoes hold their shape and flavour, pumpkin has a higher water content and is more like to collapse, waxy or firm potatoes like Charlottes or Desirées won’t break down and thicken stews like a floury Rooster or King Edward potato will. Many green vegetables like kale or peas aren’t at their best after slow cooking, so add them at the end of cooking to retain bite.
Following this rule of the right vegetable for the right dish will open up possibilities for slow-cooker dishes only restricted by your imagination. You’ll have no trouble getting your ‘five a day’ this way.
Sticky-Glazed Balsamic Beetroot
Potato and Olive Stew with Preserved Lemons
One of my favourite cookbooks is the wonderful
Sichuan Cookery
by Fuchsia Dunlop. Not only are her recipes mouthwatering, she writes beautifully, making it a treat to read as well as cook from.
This is my adaptation of the Sichuan classic of fish-fragrant aubergine for the slow cooker. The name refers to the style in which fish is often cooked and this dish is in fact fish-free and completely vegetarian and vegan.
It is extremely simple to make and is delicious alongside rice and a quickly wilted green leafy vegetable of your choice. I inauthentically serve it scattered with toasted sesame seeds instead of using expensive sesame oil.
SERVES 2–4 AS A SIDE DISH
2 aubergines
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2–3cm piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped (or 1 tablespoon ground)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
100ml hot vegetable stock or water
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
While you no longer need to remove the bitterness from aubergines, I find they cook better in the slow cooker if you do. Top and tail the aubergines and then cut them into 2–3cm chunks. Put in a colander and scatter with about a tablespoon of sea salt. Cover the top of the colander with clingfilm and allow the aubergine to drain for 30 minutes. Rinse the salt off once the aubergine has developed moisture on its surface; the salting removes the bitterness in the aubergines, but you don’t want to replace it with saltiness. Let the aubergine dry slightly.
Put the oil in the slow-cooker crock and allow it to heat slightly for about 10 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic and chilli. Stir and cook for about 2–3 minutes.
Add the aubergine, soy sauce, and sugar to the slow cooker. Stir well and then add the stock. Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook for 5–6 hours on low.
The aubergine flesh will turn a odd grey purplish shade to begin with. Don’t worry. It will collapse into a silky loveliness by the end of cooking and its colour will be much improved.
About 20–30 minutes before you want to eat the aubergine, add the red wine vinegar and stir in. I do this as I’m putting the rice on to cook.
Serve with rice and some garlicky wilted greens (I favour spring greens or kale) and a scattering of sesame seeds. Any leftovers make a lovely packed lunch, especially with a flatbread of some description.
It’s taken me a long time to get the hang of aubergines. In my vegetarian days, they haunted me with the regularity their bitter presence turned up in dishes when eating out. Then there was the time I tried to roast one and it exploded all over my oven. Or the occasion I blackened one to make a dip and burned my hand so badly it left a scar.
Gradually I learned to peel and salt them to remove the bitterness, then to prick them before they went in the oven and to wear rubber gloves when handling hot things and my hostility to the aubergine lessened, but I still didn’t love them until I learned to slow cook them thanks to help from my friend Paola who inspired this dish.
Simmering them super slowly in a rich tomatoey sauce and a splash of olive oil makes them silky and smooth (and safe) and I always have some of this in the freezer for a quick dinner. Add it to the Lasagne
here
if you’d prefer a veggie version or serve it over pasta. It’s true love after this dish.
SERVES 4 WITH LEFTOVERS
1 large or 2 medium aubergines
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 medium onion, finely diced
3 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 × 400g tin chopped tomatoes
100ml water
2 tablespoons olive oil
15g torn fresh basil, to serve
salt and pepper
I know people say you don’t need to salt modern-day aubergines because the bitterness has been bred out of them, but I’ve tried foregoing this stage several times and it just doesn’t work well for me.