Idle Cook Club - Veggie Feeds-me: My Body Is Ready

[Woodfella]

Do you use it a lot?

My oven does my head in and a slow cooker seems like a really easy low effort way to make tasty things. Id also like to pull some pork.

Crock pot seems like a good brand. Seen ones with automatic stirring and stuff! Guess I'm just after a basic one big enough to stick a chicken in.

[jennegatron]

For sure! We use our crock pot probably 3-4 times a month during the winter, less so in the summer, as it makes the kitchen warm for most the day (still probably once a month though). Here's some highlights of what we like to make: BBQ pork shoulder, pot roast, carnitas, & stew. We've made chicken breasts and lamb shanks in it before as well. It's super versatile and I like it as something you can prepare the night before, put in the fridge and then put it in and turn it on the next morning and by the time you come home, dinner is ready for you already.

[Cordeos]

I made Minestrone! Its quite good, and since it had both Cannellini beans and green beans its a theme double wammy. My only complaint is that I failed to start the soup early enough and was quite hungry by the time the 2.5 hour cook time was over.

 

 

https://food52.com/recipes/4656-minestrone-soup

[JonCole]

Does anyone have any experience with slow cookers? I'm looking to get one and don't know what's good.

Sorry if this is the wrong thread couldn't see a general cookery.

 

http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-slow-cooker/

 

I have their pick (I actually have two of them, I liked it so much) and highly recommend it.

[clyde]

The night she made it, I thought the soup Cm0nster made was a pleasant dish for winter, though it did have a slight wateriness. The cornbread was like a dessert; it was like cake without icing.

Today it was delicious. Once my spoon couldn't feed me fast enough I started pouring the contents of the bowl directly into my mouth until it was all gone. The vegetables and beans seem to have absorbed the broth and the broth absorbed some of the vegetables and beans.

Also of note: Cm0nster made black-bean tacos before the soup and it was excellent as always. It's ine of my favorite dishes. Make sure to heat the taco shells in the oven first to bake the staleness off.

[dibs]

Soup is better the next day, and better again out of the freezer! Everything gets time to meld a little.

[osmosisch]

I don't think you're supposed to eat Vulcan soup.

[sucks2Bme]

I present you with 

 

Kitchen Sink Chili

 

I started by soaking a bag of white dry beans for 24 hours, then draining, then cooking them for 1.5 hours, then draining then adding it to the following mix:

 

I browned some minced meat, onions, garlic, shredded carrots. 

had some salami and diced some of that up and threw it in too.

Got some peppers from a friends birthday party leftovers, so chopped a few of those as well and threw them in. 

 

then i added two packs of tomato puree and then the beans, and added some vegetable broth. Brought to a boil and then turned down the heat.

 

Found some mushrooms so chopped those up too and threw them in.

 

Then I added a package of spicy smoked paprika spices, one package chili spices, one package provencal herbs

 

then I added some flour to thinken it (at this point i was just tossing stuff in)

 

let cook for about an hour and stirred.

 

tasted good. was very spicy.

 

[Cm0nster]

I made Minestrone! Its quite good, and since it had both Cannellini beans and green beans its a theme double wammy. My only complaint is that I failed to start the soup early enough and was quite hungry by the time the 2.5 hour cook time was over.

 

 

https://food52.com/recipes/4656-minestrone-soup

Do you think that if I used canned beans and skipped that step it would make a big difference in the flavor?

[Cordeos]

Do you think that if I used canned beans and skipped that step it would make a big difference in the flavor?

I think it would be just fine. Replacing some of the water with a stock of some kind or adding a bullion cube is a good way to hedge your bets.

[Deadpan]

There's a local Jamaican place that makes great stews, so I used the opportunity to try to make something similar. I used this recipe for inspiration, but deviated a little bit to get rid of leftover vegetables. So besides the beans and sweet potato, I used mushrooms, spring onions and fresh tomatoes. Also I noticed too late that we were out of stock cubes, so had to use water instead. Other than that, it turned out pretty good.

 

 

Before adding coconut milk

 

 

After adding coconut milk

 

 

Served with polenta

[Badfinger]

Beans! We made our bean dishes today. Because it's winter and The Big Game is coming up we made some chili. GF took the lead on this one, vegetarian chili. We substituted lentils for quinoa, and added some of the sauce from a can of chiles in adobo. Very hearty! I liked it a lot. Not spicy, but you could tell it had a little bit of heat. Nothing wild from bite to bite, though. I would love to actually have this with quinoa. She also only used one can each of beans instead of 3 cans total, and it could have stood to have more beans in it.

 

I made a fairly straightforward take on the Foodspin chili recipe. I used frozen bell peppers instead of fresh (much cheaper), added the entire can of chiles in adobo, and used both black and kidney beans (4 cans total). It was much hotter than the veggie chili, probably from the poblanos and adobo. You could tell bite to bite it had some spice. It came out much more watery than I'm used to, for reasons I'm not 100% certain about! Possibly the frozen peppers? To combat that I added some cornstarch slurry and let it simmer an extra while. I'll be taking this to the Super Bowl party tomorrow, so between the extra doctoring and chilling/reheating for tomorrow I'm hoping it'll cohere a little better on Sunday. No pictures of this one yet because it wasn't finished when we sat down to dinner, might add some.

 

I made some cornbread to go with the chili (How To Cook Everything is a fabulous cookbook everyone), and we mulched some avocado on top.

 

 

 

Other chili is done! Poached some eggs on top of it for breakfast. Still too soupy for me, but it tastes totally fine.

 

[Cordeos]

Bonus bean recipe! Seriously though I use beans once a week since they make vegetarianism easy

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/03/vegetarian-tamale-pie-recipe.html

Super tasty, I love the effect of making the corn bread on top of the bean, tomato mixture. My crust didn't turn out nearly as thick as the one in the recipe no idea why. I also didn't put in the olives because I hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.

[Badfinger]

Serious Eats is one of my favorite post-Good Eats websites. I highly recommend checking it out for learning about the techniques of cooking with a science backbone.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Dang, that looks super nice. Bookmarking that in case I can veganise it at a later date. The site looks great too!

 

My black beans are soaking right now so tonight I'm ready to cook up my soup. Going back to my new veg cook book. I'll post photos and the recipe on request but it looks tasty from the photo.

[Cordeos]

Dang, that looks super nice. Bookmarking that in case I can veganise it at a later date. The site looks great too!

 

My black beans are soaking right now so tonight I'm ready to cook up my soup. Going back to my new veg cook book. I'll post photos and the recipe on request but it looks tasty from the photo.

Serious Eats is great, I just wish you could save recipes on the site, I really don't like having to use bookmarks.

 

Not sure if I will get to it before Wednesday, but this has become one of my favorite recipes lately. Rice cooked in coconut milk/coconut water is so fantastic.

 

https://food52.com/recipes/13508-caribbean-rice-and-beans

[dibs]

Oh man, that rice looks gooood!

 

Edit: I'm gonna make hummus this week.

[SuperBiasedMan]

For convenience sake I use Pepperplate to save all my recipes (they have a phone app that syncs) so I can just grab recipes from all sites, link back to the original source but still add my own notes/changes (like converting from american measurements).

[jennegatron]

It's my turn! your mission should you choose to accept it, is stuffed peppers. You can go stuffed bell peppers, it could be chile relleno, it could be jalapeno poppers. Vegetarian, vegan, just a bunch of meat stuffed in a pepper, doesn't matter! : )

[tabacco]

Argggg no, I'm two behind now

[SuperBiasedMan]

That's great. I've never actually made stuffed peppers, so it'll be a fun adventure. A reminder to people that it's technically still bean time til Wednesday. But drifting dishes early or late is perfectly fine!

 

As an aside. I ruined my beans. I was using dried beans and misread how long they were meant to boil for so they were woefully undercooked. My soup was still tasty as I could dip bread in and get a good flavour off of it, but the hard beans were not edible. Let this be a lesson not to use dried beans (unless you know what you're doing I guess).

[Cordeos]

Argggg no, I'm two behind now

Just put beans in a pepper.

Would it be ok if we did stuffed something else? like tomatoes, mushrooms or squash?

I am totally fine making stuffed peppers if you want to be strict

If anyone needs a pepper recipe I have used this one many times to great success:

https://food52.com/recipes/15233-stuffed-peppers-with-wild-rice-italian-sausage-caramelized-fennel

[jennegatron]

If you are fundamentally opposed to a stuffed pepper, or make it frequently, or are allergic and you would like to stuff another similar food item that's fine. I'm looking for a stuffed fruit/vegetable/fungus tho.

No making calzones!!!!

[SuperBiasedMan]

*contemplates making a "Stuffed SBM"*

[Cm0nster]

OK cause I was actually going to stuff a squash and be all like I hope this counts so I am glad it happened before me. I actually am not a fan of any pepper, I can't even eat food after I have picked them out because you can't pick out that flavor it leaves behind. Anyway so I am stuffing acorn squash.