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Slow Cooker Spinach, Lentil & Tortellini Soup

22 Nov

 

This is one of my favorite soups to make.  I got the recipe from the Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes, a cookbook I bought when I first got my slow cooker a few years ago.  I was secretly wishing for spinach from Bountiful Baskets, and this week, that wish was fulfilled!  And it’s pretty chilly here today, so perfect weather for eating and making soup.  The original recipe calls for ham and for chicken broth, but I make it without the ham and you can switch to vegetable broth to make this a meatless meal!  I think it tastes great without the ham, but you may choose to add it in.  Mine also looks less soup-like in the picture above because I used a larger family size package of tortellini, because that’s what my girls like the most.

Slow Cooker Spinach, Lentil, and Tortellini Soup

1/2 cup dry lentils
2 cups coarsely shredded carrots (I used the julienne blades on my mandolin slicer)
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 ounces chopped cooked ham or Canadian style bacon, optional
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp snipped fresh basil or 2 tsp dried basil, crushed
1 1/2 Tbsp snipped fresh thyme or 1 1/2 tsp dried thyme, crushed
1/4 tsp pepper
5 cups reduced sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 9-oz pkg refrigerated cheese-filled tortellini
1 bunch fresh spinach, slightly torn

1. Rinse lentils and drain. Place lentils in a slow cooker. Add the carrots, onion, ham or bacon (if using), garlic, dried basil and thyme (if using), and pepper. Pour broth and water over all.

2. Cover; cook on low heat setting for 6 1/2 – 7 hours or on high heat setting for 3 1/4 – 3 1/2 hours. If using the low heat setting, turn to high heat setting. Stir in tortellini. Cover and cook 30 minutes more. To serve, stir in spinach and, if using, the fresh basil and thyme.

I also like to put some shredded mozzarella cheese on my serving.

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Slow Cooker Italian Chicken

19 Nov

This meal was a bit of an experiment, and luckily it turned out good!  It was very easy to put together and not very many ingredients.  You don’t have to use carrots, you could use another vegetables, like broccoli or cauliflower, maybe even green beans.  I thought about adding potatoes to this too, but decided I would serve it over angel hair pasta, that way, I would have the pasta for the kids if they didn’t want much of the chicken or carrots.  They ate some chicken, only tried the carrots.  My husband thought it was great.  Parmesan Garlic Pull Apart Bread would be a great addition to this meal too, but my oven was already taken with Persimmon Cookies (recipe coming soon), so no bread for us tonight.

Slow Cooker Italian Chicken

What you need:

1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 lb carrots, sliced, or a vegetable of your choice
1 cup Italian dressing
1/2 box angel hair pasta, cooked

How to make it:

Spray your slow cooker with cooking spray.  Add chicken to slow cooker, and fill in around chicken with the vegetable.  Pour the Italian dressing over all of it.  Cover, and cook for 6-8 hours on low, 3-4 hours on high.  Remove from slow cooker and serve over the cooked pasta.

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Another Use for Ciabatta Bread

17 Nov

I can’t say enough good things about the bread from Bountiful Baskets.  I’ve tried almost every kind they have offered, 9 grain, honey whole wheat, whole wheat, Italian olive oil, ciabatta, sourdough, foccacia.  Plus, all of it freezes really well, or at least is has in my experience.  So, when I had a bottle of barbecue sauce that was about to expire, I wanted to make Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken and Broccoli Cheese Cornbread, but didn’t have buns and didn’t want to make a run to the store just for that.  Cue the ciabatta bread in the freezer.  I mostly have only made BLTs with it, but decided to give it a try for the BBQ chicken.  It was great.  I added a little shredded cheese to mine, my husband added some pickles.  Yum!

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Slow Cooker Sour Cream Salsa Chicken

14 Oct

I can’t remember where I first got this recipe, but I used to make it quite often.  I hadn’t made it in quite a while, so my husband suggested it for dinner this week.   It is a short ingredient list, and once you make it, there are a variety of things you can do with it.  I make a package of Spanish rice to mix in with it, then make burritos.  You could make tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas.

Slow Cooker Sour Cream Salsa Chicken

1.5-2 lbs boneless, skinless, chicken breasts
1 packet taco seasoning mix
1 16 oz jar salsa
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 8 oz package sour cream

Spray slow cooker with cooking spray. Add chicken breasts. Sprinkle chicken with taco seasoning, top with salsa. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 3-4 hours. When ready to serve, remove chicken and shred. Put the cornstarch into the salsa mix in the slow cooker and stir well. Stir in sour cream and mix well. Place chicken back in slow cooker and blend in with salsa mixture.  Serve as desired.

How I use this:

Prepare 1 package of Spanish rice according to package directions.  Stir in with chicken.  Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat.  Add a large tortilla (I use the 12 in flour tortillas from Bountiful Baskets).   Place about 1 cup of the chicken/rice mixture toward one side of the tortilla.  Sprinkle Mexican blend shredded cheese over the mixture.

Fold the side, top and bottom over the mixture, then fold it all over on the remaining flap. Cook for a few minutes, then flip and cook for a few more minutes, until both sides are golden brown.

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Slow Cooker Potato Soup

8 Oct

Sorry for the short hiatus in posting, it’s been a weird week, so I haven’t gotten as much cooking in and haven’t been in our normal routine.  Anyway, it really cooled off here today (finally), so it was a soup for dinner kind of night.  My husband loves potato soup, I had potatoes I needed to get used up, so potato soup is was.  I originally was going along with this recipe, but forgot to get cream cheese while I was out, plus, my husband isn’t big on bacon in his soup, so I ended up with something a little different.

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

8 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup diced onion
6 cups water and 6 chicken bouillon cubes (or use 6 cups chicken broth)
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 tsp dried dill weed

Mix water and soup in the slow cooker.  Add in bouillon cubes, potatoes, onion, and dill weed and stir.  Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-5 hours.  If you want a thicker soup, slightly mash the potatoes before serving.

I mashed the potatoes just a little to make it still chunky.  One time I completely mashed the potatoes and it was more like mashed potatoes than soup, so to keep it more soup-like, I like the potatoes less mashed.

*As an alternative to the can of cream of chicken soup, you can use 2 Tbsp melted butter, 2 Tbsp flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 2 cups of milk, half and half, or light cream.  Be sure to stir that well with the water/broth before adding the other ingredients.

**If you want to keep the chicken out completely, use the above substitute for the cream of chicken soup and use vegetable bouillon instead of chicken bouillon, or six cups of vegetable broth instead of the bouillon and water.

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BBQ Chicken and Cornbread

11 Sep

I had some broccoli left from 8/27 Bountiful Baskets that I had chopped and frozen.  I love making Broccoli Cheese Cornbread with it, so I needed to decide on a main dish.  I have a lot of barbecue sauce that I got free with coupons, plus we had some buns that we needed to use up. So, I decided I would make shredded BBQ chicken in my slow cooker, which was perfect because I was going to be gone all afternoon co-hosting a baby shower and needed a low maintenance dinner.

To make the BBQ chicken, I first sprayed my slow cooker with cooking spray.  Next, I took frozen chicken out of the freezer and ran it under cold water to remove some of the ice.  I didn’t defrost it first, I put it in the slow cooker still frozen.  I have found that it still cooks thoroughly, so I skip the step of defrosting if I forget to get it out of the freezer or decide last minute what I’m making.  I then poured a whole 18oz bottle of barbecue sauce over the chicken.  I set it to low and set my timer for 6 hours (my slow cooker is a programmable one that cooks for the set time, then switched to the Keep Warm setting until you are ready to serve).  Once I was ready to finish up dinner, I shredded all the chicken and stirred well in the sauce.  This was then served on hamburger buns.

For the broccoli cheese cornbread, the broccoli was already chopped, so I just had to mix the ingredients.  This recipe calls for cottage cheese, which I thought seemed strange  at first, but it helps keep the cornbread really moist.  Here is how it is made:

 

Broccoli Cheese Cornbread

What you Need:

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup cottage cheese
  • 1/2 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 1 (8.5 ounce) package dry cornbread muffin mix (I use Martha White, but Jiffy makes a mix as well)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1  1/2 cups chopped broccoli

How to Make it:

  1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease an 11×7 inch baking pan.  (You can use a 13×9 pan, but the cornbread will be pretty thin and you may need to adjust your cooking time.)
  2. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs.  Mix in cottage cheese, shredded cheddar cheese and butter. Stir in the cornbread muffin mix and salt. Fold in the broccoli. Pour batter into prepared pan.
  3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean.
Here is how it all turned out.  Both girls ate it!

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