slow cooked

School is back in session. I’m still trying to find my footing, and get comfortable with the weekly routine. Having everyone at home this week meant more mouths to feed and a good excuse to either MEAL PLAN old standby recipes or try something new. I opted for “something new”. I follow recipe developer Tieghan Gerard (more commonly known as Half Baked Harvest) on Instagram and I’ve had thumbs up in the past when I’ve made her recipes. It got me thinking, how about I make three of her crockpot recipes three days in a row. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I would make the recipes giving myself a break Thursday and Friday (Thurs would be leftovers and Friday our usual Chinese take out).

I really love crockpot cooking and the idea of it as slow, easy and one pot. As with most things in life, the IDEA of something and the REALITY of it don’t often line up. I’ll dig more into that as we get into the recipes, but I’m sure you are already nodding your head. You know what I mean.

So this post is PART 1 of my SLOW COOKED week. I thought it would be easier to break down the recipes into a post for each one. For Monday I wanted to start off with a recipe that appeared simple and guaranteed (hopefully) success with the family.

Recipe #1

Crockpot Garlic Butter Chicken Meatballs with Creamy Orzo by Tieghan Gerard

(click the recipe name and it will take you to her site with the recipe and instructions)

I‘m sure you are aware of this by now, but I work from home. I make items (knitwear, crochet accessories, print t-shirts etc) and run our online store, and have a podcast with Lou. Because I am home during the day, I can meal prep as needed. I have this idea in my head that crockpot meals are generally marketed to folks who work outside of the home. The idea being “before work put ingredients in this big pot, set the cook time and serve when returned from work”. Is this anyone else’s thought? Maybe that’s a generalization of mine that needs to be retired? I think it’s important to acknowledge these recipes would be impossible if you worked outside of the home. The recipes I chose this week had at most a 4 hour cook time in the crock pot, therefore you need to be home to prep the ingredients around noon (if you eat between 5 and 6). I also opted for the slower cook time vs the fastest which cooks at a higher temp. Prep time and cook times given on recipes are often fairly useless to me as I take much much longer than the total time listed.

I substituted ground turkey for chicken as that’s what I had at home. I don’t know about you, but I often use ground turkey rather glumly. I occasionally use it because I’ve been told that it’s a “healthier” meat, but it often tastes like sad hard cooked paper. Not exactly appetizing and honestly I care more about enjoying food than suffering for the “healthier” version. I think most chef’s will tell you, the best food you can give yourself is something made from scratch. My greatest success with ground turkey is often in meatloaf. I figured I’d do my best to keep these turkey meatballs from turning into gross hard balls.

Tieghan Gerard often uses stronger flavors in her recipes and I love big flavors too. She seems comfortable with adding seasoning to her recipes to ensure nice tasty meals. She’s possibly one of the only recipe developers I follow where her ingredients list is right on, I’m not adding more things just to get a little zing.

Overall, I’d say this is a very tasty, cozy fall meal. Everyone really liked it and had full plates. Lou even said the turkey meatballs were good. I do think they were a little firmer than I would have liked, but I had to brown them under the broiler longer than what she said to on the recipe. I pulled the onion out of the cooking broth and also browned it with the meatballs and that was a good idea. Broiled onions are very yummy. I wasn’t sure if an entire head of garlic would be too much all mixed in, but that was also very good. Broiling garlic after it’s been in the slow cooker all day with white wine is delicious. We all love orzo in our house and everything that went in it-spinach, sun dried tomatoes and heavy cream. It was easy to cook the orzo in the crockpot while I broiled the meatballs.

This recipe really passed the test though when we reheated it the next morning and ate the remainder for breakfast. Lou and I are both big fans of dinner for breakfast. Let me know if you make the recipe and tell me what you think!