Crockpot Cooking
Well, my new house came along with a couple of crockpots. I'm sure none of you know this, but I've been threatening to make some beef barley soup for several months now, and I managed to find a recipe for Crockpot Beef Barley Soup. I finally got around to getting everything together (got 5 cents off my food because I brought my own bag (woohoo)) the other day and set out to make the soup. Never having used a crockpot before, I was a little leery of just putting raw beef in with all the other stuff but went ahead and did what the recipe said. I also wanted to put some potatoes in because, well, who makes beef barley soup without potatoes, I mean come on recipe, get with it. Unfortunately, the crockpot wasn't big enough to fit anything else in, not even a single piece of potato. So I waited the 8 hours it said to cook everything and had a bowl. It was darn good, even without potatoes. But with the room that my eating a bowl of soup created, I cut up some potatoes and put them in, cooking the soup for a couple more hours. Voila. It's good both with and without potatoes. Sometime I'll have to get a bigger crockpot, so I can make it with potatoes right off the bat. I think I'll call it beef barely soup without the potatoes. That seems good to me.
posted by Eric @ 4:15 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Way to Crock. I have some mad good crockpot recipes if you need suggestions--I've been playing with mine for over a year now and I use it about twice a week on average. How many liters' volume do you have to work with?
Do you know anything about cooking lentils? Not in a crock pot, just generally. Mine always come out hard!
Being a sciency sort of guy, I know that my 2 quart crockpot is equivalent to 2 liters. Go me...Certainly, send me some recipes. Especially easy ones!
As for lentils...remember that French lentil soup that I told you about? That's the only time I've cooked lentils, but they came out soft. So I guess I basically simmer them in a liquidy mass for 35 minutes. What do you do?
RE: cooking lentils...
Before you even put your lentils in the recipe you're working with, crock pot or otherwise, you need to soak them in water for several hours--I usually leave them overnight (my favorite cookbook calls this process "rinsing," which is a complete misnomer). About 2 cups of water for every cup of lentils oughta do it.
re:Re: cooking lentils. I disagree on the necessity of the soaking. I never did it and they came out fine, though it certainly wouldn't hurt. I also forgot to mention that I rinse and drain them before cooking, again, not that that would really help them to soften
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home