5 Surprising Slow Cooker Recipes To Make All Winter Long

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with slow cooker beef pot roast that's right i got so many requests for slow cooker recipes i finally went and found and dusted off my slow cooker and we're going to use it to make a beautiful beef pot roast so here we go so what we're going to use here is what's called a seven bone chuck rose all right you see that bone kind of makes the shape of a seven that's where it gets its name all right if you turn it upside down you have what they call an l roast all right i just made that part up so once you get your seven bone roast you're gonna go ahead and season both sides very generously with salt and pepper it looks like a lot but that's a big thick piece of meat all right so season generously then i want you to coat both sides with white flour okay just regular all-purpose flour i want you to sprinkle it on and i want you to pat it into that meat really well okay in the industry this is known as spanking in the flour and there's no way i would just make up a term like that to you know make you sound ridiculous in front of a chef one day it's just not my style all right so you're gonna spank in the flour until it's well coated shake off the excess and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna sear this meat really well on both sides i'm gonna put a large large skillet on medium-high heat with a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil and when the oil starts to shimmer and it's hot we're going to go ahead and sear that on both sides now you want a really nice brown crust on this so there's two ways you can tell the second best way is look for the blood the juice coming up to the surface or just look underneath that's the best way if it's brown turn it over now just because we're going to use a slow cooker to cook this meat doesn't mean everything's just gonna get thrown into the pot in fact those slow cooker recipes where you just add everything to the crock pot and turn it on those are not good those are more what's the word for it stupid because you gotta still use the proper techniques like browning the meat and caramelizing some of the vegetables etc and you see here i have some quality quality crustification all right so once my meat was very very well seared on both sides i remove that to a plate i'm going to turn it down to medium and i'm going to add some thickly sliced mushrooms and a chunk of butter all right so i'm going to start sauteing those again i'm on medium heat here i gave them about a three or four minute head start when they just started to brown lightly i went ahead and i threw in a roughly chopped onion okay this is gonna cook so long do not be worried about precision cutting all right just whack that thing up so i'm gonna cook the mushrooms and the onions for about five minutes more until the onions start to turn translucent all right you definitely want some color on the edges of those mushrooms and onions that's gonna help give the sauce a nice deep color i'm gonna throw in a couple cloves of chopped garlic give that another minute all right when it gets to that point i'm going to throw in a nice big tablespoon of flour and that's going to help thicken that gravy later alright stir that in cook that for about a minute and we're almost done here i'm going to go ahead and add about a tablespoon of tomato paste i'm gonna caramelize that a little bit just in the center of the pan just for like a minute all right and at that point we're gonna add our stock now i use chicken broth i know a lot of people use beef broth for this i really think it comes out better with chicken you're gonna get so much beef flavor from that giant hunk of beef we're gonna braise here that you don't really need it so i like the lighter flavor profile of the chicken broth up to you all right i'm gonna stir that in as soon as that comes back to a simmer it's gonna thicken up and then just turn it off all right so that's looking good i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to place some celery and some carrots in the bottom of my crock pot i'm going to lay my gigantic seven bone roast on top and yes it's a very tight fit but that's okay that's gonna sort of shrink up and collapse as it cooks so as long as you can get the lid on you're okay i'm gonna throw in some fresh herb i have some rosemary and some thyme i'm gonna dump over my onion and mushroom mixture kind of poke everything down and then the easy part put on the lid lock it down put it on high and you're talking about five or six hours okay basically you want it to be fork tender all right so this was me after about two hours it was starting to kind of shrink up a little bit a little bit of juice liquid was coming out of the vegetables all right so check it every few hours poke it down a little bit eventually it's going to look like this you're going to have fat pooling up at the top always just like if we're braising this on the stove you want to go ahead and skim off any fat that comes up you can do that continually throughout the cooking eventually the bones are going to release and you can pull out the bones with your tongs and that will give you more room all right and eventually it's going to be completely falling off the bone in fork tender and you are pretty much done you can try but you really can't screw up a pot roast in a slow cooker as long as you let it cook long enough you're good to go alright now some people pull out the meat like this in these big chunks and they try to slice it why would you bother just break off hunks of meat and serve that just grab a couple chunks throw it on some mashed potatoes ladle over that amazing gravy and those braising vegetables celery onions carrots those mushrooms and by the way i believe i've trained you to the point where you know you needed to taste that sauce and adjust for salt and pepper right it probably needs another pinch or two of salt maybe a grind of pepper all right maybe even a shake of cayenne you know how we like it maybe you'll brighten it up a little bit with some chopped fresh parsley optional and there we go a beautiful seven bone beef pot roast so delicious you know that song by george thurgood bad to the bone this is the opposite of that song so i hope you give it a try it's really really nice way to use a slow cooker anyway you can head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more information as usual and as always enjoy apple cider braised pork roast and actually that's kind of false advertising because i'm not using apple cider i'm using apple juice but both work in this recipe so either one we're also going to do a beautiful beautiful reduction sauce no ruse no thickeners just natural goodness so here we go i have a boneless pork shoulder roast this one's about four and a half pounds which is i think a perfect size for this recipe we're gonna season that pretty generously on both sides with salt and pepper i'm going to take a large skillet on high heat with a little bit of vegetable oil and we're going to sear that on all sides you want to get a pretty decent brown crust on there once you've browned your piece of pork thoroughly i'm going to transfer that into our slow cooker i'm going to turn the heat down to medium and i'm going to add some sliced shallots and diced celery now you can certainly use onion here but i had some shallots so i thought for a change of pace i would go with the shallots i'm simply going to cook those in whatever fats left in the pan just for a couple minutes we're just giving them a head start this is all going to braise for a long time so after two or three minutes i'm gonna pour in apple cider vinegar and deglaze the pan we want to make sure we get all those brown bits off the bottom that's all you know free flavor and we're going to cook that until the apple cider vinegar is just about gone see that it's almost evaporated at that point you want to scrape the entire contents of the pan into the slow cooker all right i'm also going to toss in four or five cloves of peeled garlic you don't need to slice it you don't need to chop it you can just throw them in hold just like that i'm going to throw in a bay leaf and then finally we're going to finish this with a couple cups of apple cider or in my case apple juice they both work really well so we're going to pop on the lid i'm going to set my slow cooker to low and we're gonna let that braise for about six hours approximately until basically fork tender now every couple hours i want you to turn it over this is not a braised dish that has a lot of liquid so that liquid is only coming up about a third of the way up the pork roast so every couple hours i want you to turn it and it's cooking nice and gently nice and slowly all right not much can go wrong here but you do want to turn it every couple hours now we're not making pulled pork i don't want this to fall apart i want to be able to slice this like a pork roast so i do want it to go until it's tender but i don't necessarily want it falling apart so you're going to have to be the judge you're going to have to be the boss of your pork roast see right there mine was almost ready it was just about where i wanted it but i thought to myself you know what give it another half hour and it'll be perfect now if you're new to this cooking thing and you're a little nervous we don't blame you relax though air on the side of a little too long versus not long enough all right once i've determined the pork is done to my liking i'm going to remove that to a plate cover it with foil to keep it warm because our sauce is going to take about 10-15 minutes to put together which is fine that big hunk of meat is gonna stay plenty warm all right while the pork rest we're gonna transfer the cooking liquids the braising liquid into a saucepan i'm gonna put that on high heat bring it up to a boil and simply reduce it down to about approximately 25 of its volume when it starts getting down low you want to keep an eye on it when mine reduce down to that far i'm going to turn off the heat and finish the sauce and you know what i just realized i haven't made any jokes during this video and you know why because i do not find apple juice humorous not at all i'm going to add some black pepper some cayenne a pinch of salt all right final touches i'm going to whisk in a spoon of dijon mustard and you don't have to use dijon here you can use the yellow mustard if you want but don't and then we're going to finish with a few chunks of cold butter which are basically going to thicken up the sauce a little bit give it a beautiful beautiful texture a lovely shine and once the butter goes in make sure you keep whisking keep whisking keep whisking until the butter disappears and you're done and yes i have to admit something right now when you weren't looking i strained this because i wanted to look pretty in the pictures at home you don't have to strain it all right i'm going to finish with a little fresh herb i'm using italian parsley a little bit of fresh sage would be very lovely all right i'm going to give it a taste do any final seasoning adjustments maybe a little more salt maybe a little more pepper depends you decide and then i think you know what to do next slice your pork put it on a hot plate spoon over some of that sauce remember this is a highly reduced very flavorful sauce you don't need a lot okay so just a few tablespoons is all you're going to need even without the sauce this pork is delicious because it's slowly braised in that flavorful liquid but when you put this sauce on it just goes up to a whole nother level and if you did everything properly you do not need a knife this will literally be fork tender and that was really really delicious and here you go i know you guys love when i do the second bite and this really did deserve it just so luscious and the epitome of homey cold weather cooking so i really hope you give that a try all the ingredients are on foodwishes.com of course and as always enjoy homemade ketchup that's right this takes a long time to make it's not that much cheaper but at least when you're done you will not like the flavor as much as the store-bought brand alright so i want to be clear that i'm only doing this because we got so many food wishes for it not because i think it's a good idea you are completely crazy to make your own homemade ketchup so on that note let's get started so we're going to need two cans of ground tomatoes also known as crushed tomato a lot of homemade ketchup recipes call for tomato paste but i never like how those taste so we're gonna go old school and just start with crushed tomatoes and cook them down to sort of our own tomato paste and by the way we're going to use a slow cooker for this process it's going to take a long time but it's going to take some of the labor factor out of it we're going to go ahead and rinse each of those cans out with about a quarter cup of water so after the tomato product and a little bit of water we need some sweetener and in our case we're going to use just plain white sugar of course most of your store bought brands are using corn syrup or even worse high fructose corn syrup so i guess that would be one of the advantages of making it at home so we're gonna dump in our sugar of course to balance the sugar we're gonna need some vinegar and we're just gonna use regular white distilled vinegar so i'm gonna pour that in obviously all these measurements are critical and they'll all be on food wishes of course all right after that we're going to go ahead and add some onion powder and some garlic powder we're going to add some plain table salts a little touch of celery salt a little touch of dry mustard a little bit of very finely ground black pepper and one single clove that's it just one in fact i took that little berry off the top that little bud i want just a little bit of clove in there all right we're gonna give that a stir and as i was stirring i was like oh my god you forgot cayenne what are you doing so a little bit of cayenne and then basically the entire rest of the recipe is you putting your slow cooker on high and cooking it uncovered for a really long time until it reduces down by almost half and become very very thick now you can definitely do this on the stovetop but you'd have to stand there stirring like forever because it could burn to the bottom and in a slow cooker even though it's going to take like 10 or 12 hours which is basically how long mine took you still don't really have to worry about it scorching and burning as long as you're giving it a stir every hour or so so to me that's just easier and safer okay so every once in a while just give it a stir and monitor it and like i said it's going to take a really long time and you'll actually notice in this shot here the lights look totally different that's because it's almost dark and i had to turn my kitchen lights on so at this point i was pretty much done but i ran out of daylight and i didn't want to finish filming in the dark so i decided to just put it away for the evening i thought to myself you can catch up in the morning but anyway the next morning i brought it back up to temperature and then to finish we're simply going to put this through a fine strainer but to make that a little easier i like to give it a little blending with a stick blender with the immersion blender i guess you could do that with the raw tomato product but i always feel like it works better at the end because it's thicker so i'm going to give that a quick blending at that point we're going to lay that into a fine strainer and then simply use the back of a ladle to push the mixture against the screen and it will trap any skins or seeds or whatever in the strainer there you go all right so most of it will go through the rest of that you're gonna discard don't forget to scrape the bottom there'll be lots of ketchup under there at that point i'm gonna transfer it into a bowl that's easier to shoot and then we're going to let it cool completely before the final step which is tasting it you want to taste this cold because that's how you're going to serve it and as far as spices and salt go things taste different hot and cold so wait till it cools down give it a taste i decided to go with a little more cayenne a little more pepper a little more salt and of course i'm using a clean spoon to stir that in and if i want to taste it again i'll drip from the clean spoon to the spoon i already tasted on and that's how you prevent cross-contamination not that that's a big deal but still and once that's seasoned you're ready to serve that up may i suggest french fries those work nicely so we give this a taste really good although i feel like i'm forgetting something there we go just need a little adult beverage and all kidding aside that really was delicious very very very similar to those popular supermarket brands one of them rhymes with rhymes just a little bit of a brighter flavor a little more tomatoey of a flavor but very very close very similar and was it worth it hell no like i said you gotta be crazy to make your own ketchup so while i don't think anyone should ever try to make this i did want to show you because so many people requested it so to the craziest members of our audience who despite my jokes despite my warnings will still attempt to make this i'd like to say to those few brave souls i love you guys alright so i really do secretly hope you give this a try although on the record don't do it it's crazy so head over to foodwishes.com for all the top secret recipe ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] apple butter that's right have you ever been eating applesauce and thought to yourself this is good but i wish it was like a thousand times better well my friends that is a very good way to describe apple butter and there's more good news the technique for making this stuff is very very easy except please don't confuse easy with fast okay while super super simple this takes many many many many hours but the results are so well worth it as hopefully you're going to find out so with that let's go ahead and get started and first up we're going to cut up about five pounds of apples and my favorite variety for this would be granny smith but any classic cooking apple will work and what we'll do before we start cutting is go ahead and take out the core which if you have one of these cores is pretty easy since all you've got to do is sort of plunge that down through the middle and then once that core has been removed with hopefully all the seeds we will simply cut this into quarters and then you could if you want just start slicing these but i like to give them one more cut and then slice them into about one inch pieces all right so that's one way you can do these but let's say for the sake of argument you don't have an apple corer you could also do it this way okay we'll make one cut straight down next to the core right about where you think the seeds would start and then once that first slice is taken off we'll set it down on the flat side and then we'll make another cut straight down again close but not too close to the core and then we'll simply do that two more times and while you will lose a little more apple than the first method it is still a pretty fast and effective way to do this and you may remember this technique from such videos as ben franklin breakfast bowl oh and as you may have noticed we did not peel these so that's going to save us a bunch of time but that's not the only reason i also think this comes out tasting better and looking better and feeling better since it's gonna actually get thicker if we don't peel them so if you've been peeling apples all your life for apple butter i'm sorry but you really did waste all that time but hey now you know and then what we're going to do once we have our five pounds of apples prepped is go ahead and transfer them into whatever we're going to cook this in which could be a roasting pan for the oven or a heavy bottom stock pot for the stovetop or as in my case into a large slow cooker which i think is by far the best and easiest method and once those have been transferred in we'll go ahead and add the rest of the ingredients which will include a little touch of white sugar just a mere cup and a half as well as a half a cup of brown sugar and i know that looks like a lot but it's roughly half of what most people use in case that makes you feel any better and then to that we're also going to need a little bit of salt as well as of course some cinnamon and then we'll finish up with some freshly grated nutmeg which i took the liberty of freshly grating earlier and then last but not least for our spices we'll do a little pinch of allspice which apparently tastes like all the spices put together and then in a little plot twist for some acidity we're going to do some apple cider vinegar okay a lot of people like to use lemon juice in this but personally i think the cider vinegar works out better and then we'll finish up with a splash of cold fresh water and that's it we'll go ahead and take a spoon and give this a mix and once all that's been stirred together it is now ready to cook and cook and cook for a really really a really long time and if we are using a slow cooker what i like to do is start it covered on the highest setting until it starts giving up its liquid and starts getting a little bit soupy which is going to take a little while i mean it's called a slow cooker for a reason so even on the higher setting this did take a good while to get to this point and then what we'll do once this mixture does come up to temperature and start to soften up and get nice and juicy is turn it down to the lower setting and let it cook uncovered for many many many many hours and exactly how many is going to depend on your slow cooker and other variables but as usual we're not going to go by time we are going to go by appearance but anyway what we want to do is cook this on low for as long as it takes until it looks like this at which point i'm going to grab an immersion blender and blend this smooth which really is quite a simple step if you have one of these stick blenders but if you don't don't worry you can just transfer it into a blender and then transfer it back of course being very careful it's hot all right we never want you burning yourself especially if you're going to blame me and we do want to get this pretty smooth but we are going to pass this through a strainer later or at least i am you do what you want but like i said i do want to puree this pretty smooth and that's it we're still not even close to being done since once pureed we're going to continue cooking this uncovered on low until it reduces even further and gets thicker and darker and even more intensely delicious and other than stirring it once in a while there's really nothing to do except wait and wait and wait some more okay so the only way to screw this up is impatience let it cook let it cook let it cook until it's at least as thick and dark as this and then what we'll do once we've determined it's cooked long enough is go ahead and pass that through a fine mesh strainer and while this step is technically optional it's only going to take a couple minutes and since you just spent like 10 hours getting up to this point that doesn't seem like that big of a deal but anyway you decide i mean you are after all the john sutter of your apple butter that's not really a butter raise your hand if you're disappointed there's no butter in this i know me too but it's fine don't worry we're gonna put butter on whatever we put this on first but anyway we'll go ahead and pass that through a strainer at which point we can go ahead and transfer that into whatever we're going to store it in and please note you're not going to be able to see the final appearance until it's fully cooled okay that color is going to deepen and it's going to thicken up and hopefully once fully cooled it should look something like this which i think is just absolutely gorgeous and at this point it's ready to serve on so many things or it may be a cheese biscuit or a piece of butter toast or in my case english muffin but no matter what you serve this on prepare to be blown away by its intense appley flavor alright you know those sticky brown juices that sort of bubble out of an apple pie that is this in a spread form all right when you make a batch of this it's basically like being able to have apple pie anytime you want and by the way if you stopped watching this video because you don't have a slow cooker you shouldn't have because in the blog post i'm going to tell you how you can do this without one but anyway that's it how i do apple butter it's always been a little shocking that applesauce is so popular in stores but you almost never see this stuff i mean who knows maybe it's too flavorful and they're afraid people can't handle it but anyway thanks to this video it doesn't matter because now you have the technology to make your own so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy slow cooker red curry beef pot roast that's right what happens when you cross southeast asia and midwest america this happens and this was incredibly delicious so if you're someone that enjoys your comfort food on the exotic side this is perfect for you so here's what we did first we found a three pound piece of old beef and i mean that literally i found this hunk of meat in the half off section in the meat department and that stuff's generally there because of color not because of taste or quality the outside turns from red to gray and they can't really sell it so they have to mark it down and i took advantage of that and it was perfect for this so you can read more about my old meat on the blog post but what we're going to do is we're going to season that with salt and pepper on both sides and we're going to brown it on high heats and just a few teaspoons of vegetable oil you want to get a really nice sear on that because there's nothing sadder than putting an unbrowned piece of meat into a slow cooker so we're not going to do that so once it's well browned you're going to turn off the heat remove it from the pan we're going to place that in our slow cooker on a bed of chopped onions and all that means is place it on top of a chopped onion we just call it a bed because you know it sounds more comfortable at that point we're going to go back to our hot pan the heat's off but the pan's still hot so i'm going to throw in a nice big spoon of red curry paste all right nothing fancy right off the supermarket shelf i'm also going to add some cumin and some coriander and all we're going to do with the back of our spoon is just rub that spice mix into the hot oil just to wake it up a little bit technically that's an optional step but it does make me feel better at that point we're going to add a couple cups of chicken stock all right we're going to put our heat back on high i'm also going to stir in a can of coconut milk love that stuff all right the exposure setting on the camera doesn't like it but it is a wonderful product so i'm going to give that a stir i'm also going to toss in a can of diced tomatoes i'm using the one that has the roasted green chilies in it very nice for this we're also going to pour in some asian fish sauce very critical ingredients that's going to give the cooking liquid its saltiness and even more important its funkiness and then we need a little brown sugar for sweetness to balance the saltiness and the funkiness all right i'm gonna add a whole bunch of minced garlic i'm gonna add a spoon of tomato paste and then some sliced ginger i just peeled and sliced the root and i just do it big enough pieces you can pull out later you could also grate it or mince it up to you and then last but not least a little bit of fresh lime juice and i'm not dirtying any strainer just squeeze it through your fingers and you'll catch all the seeds and yes we are working under the assumption that you do wash your hands thoroughly before you start cooking you do right good so a little bit of fresh lime juice we're going to give that a stir and as soon as this comes up to a boil we're going to carefully pour it over our pot roast i'm also going to pop in a couple bay leaves give that a little stir and then we're going to cover that and then we're going to let that slow cooker do its thing all right i'm going to do mine on low which is going to take you maybe seven or eight hours to get this fork tender you could also do it a little quicker on high and we'll talk more about that on the blog post but bottom line you're gonna let it braise in that slow cooker until the meat is fork tender and i suggest using a fork to test it so if you can stick the fork in with a minimum amount of effort it's ready at that point i'm gonna remove my meat from the broth all right just the meat leave the other stuff in there because what we're going to do to finish this is braise some greens and cook some potatoes in this broth it's going to be amazing and at this point if you want to skim a little that fat off the top hey check it out there i am hey how you doing or you can take a ladle and skim a little of that off although in many parts of the world you could get arrested for this because traditionally curries like this the fat is left to float on the top it's considered a very important flavor component all right but we're going to skim a little off so we're going to go ahead and prep our veggies i have some little new potatoes i just cut in half if you're working with big potatoes just cut them in chunks and then for a little green edge we're going to use some baby bok choy which are very easy to prep just cut off a little of the bottom slice the stock parts into like two inch sections and you can actually leave the leaves whole like that all right very simple once the veggies of your choice are prepped go ahead and dump them into your broth poke it down there should be just enough liquid to make it look like that if you gotta add a splash of water go ahead we're gonna cover that i'm gonna turn that on to high and i'm gonna cook that until the potatoes are tender how long is that gonna take i have no idea but it doesn't matter you're gonna test them with a knife and when they are tender we're gonna thicken this up just ever so slightly with a teaspoon of cornstarch that we're gonna dissolve and like a tablespoon of cold water we're gonna go ahead and stir that in and i don't want this to be a thick gravy but i do want that broth to thicken ever so slightly just like one degree all right just to take it from watery to something that's a little closer to a sauce all right so stir that in and then the last step here i like to cut my meat into large chunks just makes it easy to serve it also makes it quicker to heat through so this is kind of turning into a stew but that's okay everyone likes to so we're gonna dump that in i'm gonna cover that and let that go for about 10 or 15 minutes and as soon as that meat's heated through and that broth thickens up just ever so slightly we're ready to taste and serve so this really is a simple recipe sure it takes a while but you know what they say you don't want to hurry a curry but anyway we're going to stick a spoon in there we're going to taste it for seasoning and if you're happy with it dish it up look at that you can already tell it's going to be awesome and then to make this slightly even more awesome we're going to top it with some crunchy roasted peanuts just chop them up and a healthy dose of fresh cilantro and that truly is an amazing bowl of food i think it's just a really great technique for pot roast and like you saw a great way to use up a less than perfect piece of meat and by the way pro tip you probably don't want to mention to your dining guests that you got the meat for half price sounds a little sketchy but anyway notwithstanding our suspect meat this really did taste wonderful that meat is just melt in your mouth tender the potatoes soak up that rich spicy aromatic broth and you can see there what i was talking about about the corn starch that little bit doesn't really thicken it into a gravy it just gives it a little extra body which makes the broth extra nice just beautiful so anyway here's what you should do figure out where your slow cooker is find it dust it off and give this great red curry beef pot roast recipe a try so head over to food wishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 150,795

Keywords: Slow Cooker Beef Pot Roast, Slow Cooker Cider Braised Pork Roast, Copycat Ketchup, Apple Butter, Slow Cooker Red Curry Beef, homemade ketchup, ketchup recipe, how to make ketchup, slow cooker recipes, crock pot recipes, crock pot ideas, easy crock pot recipes, easy slow cooker recipes, apple butter recipe, pot roast recipe, easy pot roast recipe, best pot roast, pork butt, pork shoulder, apple cider, red curry, food wishes, chef john, winter recipes, easy dinner

Id: 79Dq3Ojg0mA

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 16 2022