Curry is one of my favorite meals ever, because you can make it in a crock pot and basically do no work, or in a sauce pot and also do almost no work! I’m sure that there are curry recipes which take many exotic ingredients and hours of preparation, but for a basic recipe, and an American palate, curry is super simple.
This curry incorporates chickpeas, sweet potatoes, and other aromatic vegetables for an amazing, nutritious, tasty recipe. I used basically a jar of salsa starter that I had canned earlier in the summer, but you can also use frozen veggies, or fresh diced veggies. This is very filling, especially if served over rice. If you must have meat, feel free to also add some pork or chicken or beef.
Ingredients:
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 medium sweet potato, diced
1 medium white or yellow potato, diced
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1 can crushed or diced tomatoes
Optional: 1 tbsp turmeric, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp red chili pepper, 1 tbsp garam masala
Step 1: Dice up the potatoes and throw them in a sauce pot or crock pot. Add the diced tomatoes and vegetables. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer and cook 20-25 minutes. (Or set to low and cook 2-4 hours).
Step 2: Open the chickpeas and drain. Add to the pot, along with any spices you want to use. Cook just until everything is heated through, if using a crock pot, add about 30 minutes before serving. If desired, boil some rice and serve with the curry, or you can serve with flat bread.
One of the things I was most excited about when moving to New England was of course the seafood! The beautiful thing about being near the sea is the abundance of affordable and fresh seafood. From salmon to crab to scallops to, of course, lobster, Connecticut is a playground for those who are pescatarian.
This recipe is a simple one for New England Clam Chowder, the whitish creamy version. Not the icky, reddish, tomato-based Manhattan style. Did you know that in 1939, a bill was introduced by State Rep. Cleveland Sleepe in Maine to make it illegal to add tomatoes to chowder?! Oh yeah, New England takes its clam chowder seriously.
The recipe here calls for cooking the potatoes and clams most of the day in a slow cooker, then creating a roux and adding it in just before serving. I have added in my own Polish/Slovak flair by switching the cream for sour cream, creating what we call a “zapraska” (used to make Hungarian chicken paprikush soup) to deepen the flavor of the roux and lend a creamier final flavor.
You could instead cook all the ingredients but the sour cream together all day, and then simply add small amounts of hot liquid to the sour cream and flour until thickened and stir it in just before serving. That would be the ultimate hands-off chowder recipe.
Ingredients:
12 oz clams, fresh or frozen, preferably in their own juice
2-3 tbsp olive oil or butter
2 large baking potatoes
1 onion
2-3 cloves garlic
2-3 ribs celery
8 oz fish sauce or clam juice
8 oz sour cream
1/4 cup flour or cornstarch
Step 1: Dice the potatoes and put into the slow cooker. Add the entire contents of the clams (or fresh and add the clam juice). Add water to cover. (Add more for thinner soup, add just enough to cover potato pieces for thicker soup). Put the slow cooker on “low” for at least 2 hours, or up to 8 hours.
Step 2: Dice the celery, garlic, and onion into small pieces. Add the oil and veggies to a frying pan, and cook for 7-10 minutes, until translucent.
Step 3: Add the flour to the pan with the oil, stir for 2-3 minutes. Then add the fish sauce and a little water from the slow cooker until it forms a thick paste. Mix in the sour cream, and whisk it all together well. This is the roux (pronounced “roo”) you will add to thicken the soup.
Step 4: Add your roux to the slow cooker and mix well. Now your soup is ready to serve! Add more flour and less water to thicken, or add more water to make a thinner soup. Serve with nice hearty rolls and/or a fresh green salad.
Peanut butter is a great source of health protein, as long as you don’t go overboard the fat content isn’t a deal-breaker. It is also a very cheap staple to keep in the kitchen. But even the most devoted lover of peanut butter sandwiches can get bored of them in time. A simple peanut sauce goes great with chicken (or pork!) and when made in the slow cooker, it is a breeze to whip up something exotic in no time at all with basic staples.
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This sauce is a complex mixture of creamy, salty, spicy, and peanuts. Obviously do not make it or eat it around people who have a severe peanut allergy, as it contains both peanuts and peanut butter. You can control the level of spice by choosing what kinds of pepper to add, if any. Feel free to tweak the seasonings to your preferences.
Ingredients:
2-3 pounds chicken
3 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp peanuts, crushed
4 tbsp fish sauce
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 lime, juiced, or 1 tbsp lime juice
4 tbsp plain yogurt
2 tbsp sour cream
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, diced
1 inch fresh ginger, diced
1 tbsp curry powder
Optional: 1 tsp Thai chilie
Step 1: Mix all wet ingredients in a bowl.
Step 2: Add chicken and all of the spices. You could either mix this in an oven-safe container and bake at 350 degrees for 2 hours, or mix in a crock pot and bake on low for 5-6 hours.
And here you have the chicken and sauce in a crock pot.
The crushed peanuts are added on top, then cooked on low.
The peanut sauce thickens over time, and is delicious served over pasta or rice.
This post is about my newest addition to my Kindle offerings: “10 Crock Pot Freezer Meals”! You can see for yourself at my Budget Epicurean Kindle Author page. The eBook contains a complete grocery list, with the items categorized in order to easily breeze in and out of the store in minutes, as well as ten of my best & most loved slow cooker recipes, including Cranberry Spiced Chicken, Orange-Glazed Pork Chops, and White Bean Chicken Chili. I even added some handy, easy printables to label your bags, so you know what you have days or weeks later!
To watch the short video on how easy it is to shop for and assemble everything, check it out here! Of course ALDI was the store I went to (I just love them for their focus on providing the best prices over flashy ads or in store perks). I had my list in hand, and the total for everything that was going into these ten meals (minus just a few pantry staples) was $87. Given that each meal is made to serve 4, that is only $2.18 per meal!!
Of course, you can substitute as needed, such as if you have a hatred of a specific type of bean, swap it for a different kind, or if you do not eat pork, use chicken or beef instead. Definitely the highlight of the trip was finding this little bonus deal: $0.35 for canned, organic, reduced sodium black beans!!! Oh yeah, I bought 2 cases. That doesn’t count towards the meal totals…
The entire shopping trip took me probably about a half hour. And that is with writing down prices of things, and forcing my significant other, who was such a trooper, to take pictures and help me double check that I hadn’t forgotten anything. 🙂
As a reminder, you can purchase the nice printable ebook HERE.
First things first, I got everything organized. This means putting all the ingredients for each recipe into a pile. Some ingredients were used in multiple recipes, so I put those piles next to each other. Then I cut out the labels, and taped them onto a bag.
Next, take a cutting board, and for each recipe that requires dicing, chop up the peppers, or onions, or whatever, and place the raw veggies in the corresponding bag. It is best to get all that out of the way first. I actually ended up wearing goggles, because the onions were so strong and stung my eyes so that I couldn’t see for all the watering they were doing!
Next, take a can opener, and open up all your cans. Drain things like beans if you like, I didn’t even bother, just dumped the whole thing in there. Pour the canned goods into the bags. Any seasonings like chili powder or honey, pour those in next. Finally, open the meats (if using) and add those to the bags last. Be sure to keep meats separate otherwise so as to not cross-contaminate, and wash your hands after touching them.
Orange-Ginger Glazed Pork Chops
BBQ Pulled Pork
Crock Pot 5 Bean Vegetarian Chili
Salsa Chicken
Creamy Italian Chicken
Tortilla Soup
Spiced Cranberry Chicken
White Bean Chicken Chili
Garlicky Sweet Lemon Chicken
Garlicky Sweet Lemon Chicken
Chicken Cacciatore
Once you have your bags filled, you can take them to your freezer. Ideally, freeze them laying flat so that you save freezer space. You can also put any of these recipes straight into the crock pot, as I did with the garlicky sweet lemon chicken.
The day before you plan to eat one of these meals, just take the bag from the freezer and put it into your refrigerator. Preferably put the bag onto a plate or in a bowl, just in case it leaks or drips water as it thaws. The next morning, pour the whole contents of the bag into your slow cooker and cook as instructed. You can use each recipe’s suggestions, or serve with whatever you have handy. And there you have it! Ten meals that serve 4, from cans to freezer to cooked!
Freezer meals assembled and ready to go!
You can purchase this list of ten slow cooker, freezer-approved recipes, plus a complete one-page shopping list, serving suggestions, and printable freezer bag labels on Amazon!
Just search “Budget Epicurean”. Or visit this link: http://goo.gl/VtfKOq
I’m hoping to expand these meal plan offerings soon to include a vegetarian option, diabetic meal plans, gluten-free meal plans, and more! Please let me know if you have any feedback, questions, or something else you want to see in the future in the comments below or by email at budgetepicurean (at) gmail (dot) com!
You can view the video of how easy the shopping & assembly is here:
Many many food bloggers and regular people alike love this method of cooking! It is hard to overstate how much time, energy, and cash you can save by cooking this way. If you’re already experienced with meal planning based on grocery store sales, or want to try coming up with your own recipes, here’s a great article from one of my favorite frugal sites, the Simple Dollar, fully explaining the process!
No it has nothing to do with upcoming elections. It wasn’t weather related. Everyone I know and love is just fine. (as far as I know.)
My Crock Pot broke.
It was in the sink with dirty dishes, and one thing lead to another, somehow in the mountain of dishes the crock got split right down the middle. The lovely workhorse of my kitchen, and it’s hardy ceramic bowl was now split in twain, to be used no more. I was heartbroken to say the least.
Any reader of the blog knows how in love with my slow cooker I am. This thing is amazing, making my life so much easier by preparing dozens, even hundreds, of slow cooked meals for me while I work or play or do whatever somewhere else. Then we come home to a house that smells amazing and a hot and healthy meal.
Though I will of course replace my crock as soon as humanly possible, I dedicate this post to the crock pot, as its last documented meal prior to fatal injury. May your crock last many years more.
Ingredients:
1 head kale, torn into small pieces
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes
1/2 pound sausage, cut in slices or ground
1 can white beans
1 cup water or broth
Optional: parmesan cheese and rustic whole grain bread
Step 1: Rinse and tear the kale into pieces and place in the slow cooker. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and add those. Open the white beans and either dump it all in or rinse them first then add to the crock pot. Add in the water or broth to your desired thickness.
Step 2: Brown the sausage quickly in a frying pan, and add to the crock pot. At this point you can add any spices you want such as garlic, onion, paprika, rosemary, etc. Set on high for 4-5 hours or on low 6-8 hours and let it cook.
Honestly, this really only needs heated through to be eaten, but the longer you let it stew the more the flavors meld and the broth thickens to become more stew-like and less soupy. Up to you how long you want/need to wait.
This is amazing on its own, or you can serve it with some nice thick bread on the side. This makes plenty for about 4 servings, and you can of course double or halve it to your needs.
One of a busy and/or tired cook’s favorite things is being handed an idea for an easy dinner. Don’t you just hate thinking to yourself or asking the family “what do you want for dinner?” and getting blank stares, or hearing the wind whistle between your ears? Cooking fatigue can happen to the best of cooks. And especially those who are new or new-ish to cooking on the fly have a tough time with this exact question.
Something I’ve used since college to help get the creative kitchen juices flowing (literally and figuratively) is a website called Supercook.
This website curates thousands of recipes from site members and other sites all around the web. All you do is input what ingredients you have in your kitchen or pantry, or what ingredients you want to use, and presto, hundreds of recipe ideas at your fingertips!
Let’s say you have a can of black beans, a can of corn, and some tomatoes from your garden. Those three simple ingredients bring up 26 recipes alone! And by adding in staples that most all of us have (hello, black pepper and salt, flour, oil, sugar, etc) your options expand even more. You can filter by type of dish you want to make, what cuisine you are in the mood for, and even filter by dietary restrictions like excluding nuts, fish, or dairy.
Supercook is sponsoring a Back to Work cooking challenge, whereby they asked who can make magic using super simple pantry ingredients: chicken, rice, and tomatoes.
PICK ME! I can make kitchen magic with next to nothing, as abundantly proven over the years on this blog.
Conveniently, those are three of my favorite ingredients of all time. Entering them into Supercook’s website opens up over two dozen options. Several are too simple (plain steamed rice? yawn), but a recipe for chicken cacciatore catches my eye. With a few more ingredients I have on hand from an abundant harvest (fresh basil, yum!), I know this is what’s happening for dinner.
The recipe is for chicken cacciatore in the crock pot, which is even better for busy working adults! But, I’m impatient, so it had to be made tonight, and that meant on the stove top. Keep in mind you can indeed take all the ingredients and simply chuck it in the slow cooker for a truly hands-off meal that turns out like you slaved for hours.
See? Pretty dinner, but oh so easy.
A basic cacciatore recipe includes, of course, chicken, vegetables sauteed in the chicken oils, and diced or peeled tomatoes. The seared chicken is returned to the pot of vegetables and simmered about an hour until done. I of course added a few extras, which you can choose to include, or keep it simple. I used a quart of pasta sauce I’d canned myself, with garlic & basil included. You can just use a can of diced tomatoes for the same effect.
Ingredients:
2-3 pounds chicken (breast, thigh, legs)
1 cup brown, wild, or white rice
1-2 cups diced tomatoes or tomato sauce
1/2 an onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 small red bell pepper, diced
Optional extras: spinach, garlic cloves, zucchini, bay leaves
Step 1: In a frying pan, sear the chicken on all sides, about 5-7 minutes. Pour off most of the oil and set the chicken aside.
Step 2: Add the onion, and any other vegetables or spices you’re using, and cook 10-15 minutes, until onions are soft and translucent and the carrots are soft when poked with a fork.
Step 3: Pour in the tomatoes, and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken back to the pan, cover and cook 10-12 minutes.
Pro Tip: The longer you simmer this, the softer the veggies get and the more the flavors meld. But if you’re pressed for time and don’t mind slightly crunchy carrots, this can be done in as little as 15 minutes total.
Step 4: Serve warm over pasta, rice, or with a thick rustic bread on the side. I just made some rice in my cooker while the rest of the dish simmered on the stove.
This dish is super tasty & satisfying, and also quite healthy. Especially if you pack it full of delicious veggies! You could throw all kinds of things in there, like cauliflower, beans, or broccoli. This flavor combination worked out very well.
This dish is also quite frugal in addition to being healthy and delicious. A pack of chicken quarters is often on sale for $0.99/lb or less, rice is an affordable staple, and the veggies were mostly free at the height of gardening season.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and that discovering Supercook can help you too save time and energy by answering the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?”
A total workhorse in my kitchen, the humble Crock Pot (or slow cooker) is an absolute life-saver on weekdays when you just don’t have the time to cook, or to help prep ahead of time. There is something so satisfying about just tossing everything in the pot in the morning, then coming home after a long day to a house that smells like love.
Enchiladas are a great one-pot meal, and can be made with any meat you like, or made vegetarian by using only beans, tofu, and/or cheese as the filling. This recipe adds a little spice to the meat mixture as well as using whole jalapenos for a kick. And I used regular old tomato sauce because I didn’t have any enchilada sauce.
So if you want to make enchiladas with no enchilada sauce, I got you.
Ingredients:
12 10 inch tortillas (I used flour, but you can use corn too)
Step 1: Lay out your tortilla, and spread 1-2 tbsp of refried bean in the center. You can use regular canned beans of any kind as well.
Step 2: Put a layer of shredded chicken on top of the beans, as well as some hot salsa, shredded cheese, and a few sliced jalapenos.
Step 3: Wrap the tortillas up like a burrito, and layer in a sprayed crock pot. Once you have a bottom layer of 2-3, pour on a few tbsp tomato sauce. Then layer on a few more. Repeat until you use up all the tortillas.
Step 4: Sprinkle the top layer with a little more cheese and some more jalapeno slices, then set the crock pot on low for 4-6 hours.
They bake up perfectly, soft on the inside with a little bit of crisp, and just the right amount of heat.
I love slow cookers any time of year, because who wants to turn on a hot stove in the summer, and who doesn’t want to come home to a ready-to-serve hot meal in the winter! And we are all on-the-go every time in between, so time savers are a life saver.
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This recipe is super simple, just combine a few ingredients with your raw or even frozen chicken, and come home to delightfully fragrant house ad a sweet and salty entree. With asian flavors like ginger and soy pairing perfectly with sweet honey, orange, and peaches, this is a simple dinner the whole family will love. You can even cook the rice a day or two before for a completely fuss-free meal.
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Ingredients:
4-5 frozen or thawed chicken breasts
1 cup orange juice
2 tbsp honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup peach marmalade (or 1 whole peach)
2 tsp ground ginger
2 inch piece fresh ginger
2 tsp garlic salt
Step 1: Put the chicken in the bottom of a slow cooker, and pour the liquids on top. Drizzle on the honey & marmalade, and sprinkle in the spices (to taste).
Step 2: Peel the ginger, and dice into slivers. Put those on top of the chicken breasts.
Step 3: Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or high for 2-3 hours.
Place a cup or so of rice on a plate, add the chicken, and pour on some of the extra sauce. Dinner’s done!
Other optional toppings you could use: diced fresh herbs like chives or green onion, orange slivers, almonds, crushed ramen noodles, basil, jalapeno slices….
Chili is one of my absolute favorite comfort foods. It couldn’t be easier to put together, just throw all the ingredients in a crock pot and let it do the heavy lifting while you go to work, school, travel, write, hike, shop, whatever you do all day. Then come home to a hot, delicious, healthy meal that makes the whole house smell divine.
This is seriously the most perfect cold-weather dinner of all time.
White Bean Chicken Chili is definitely on my top ten for Crock Pot meals, but since I’ve been on a bit of a vegan kick lately, I wanted to make a chili with no meat or animal products that was equally delicious and satisfying. And that’s exactly what I did, and you can too!
Don’t tell those you serve that it’s vegan, and they likely won’t even know.
Ingredients:
1 can diced tomatoes (with green chilis if you want kick)
1 small can tomato paste
1 can pinto beans
1 can black beans
1 can white cannellini beans
4 tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp cumin powder
Step 1: Open all the cans, and pour directly into the crock pot. Leave the tomato juice, but if you want to drain and rinse the beans to cut down on extra sodium, you totally can.
Step 2: Cook in crock pot on low 6-8 hours, or high 2-4 hours. That’s it! Other addition you could make: chickpeas, really any other type of bean, crushed garlic, diced onion, carrots, celery, bell peppers, hot peppers, tomato juice, tomato sauce, hot sauce…
I made a batch of corn bread using Jiffy mix and a can of corn to serve with the chili. Yes, the carnivore had to add a handful of cheese, but progress is progress. Baby steps.
Since this makes a crap-ton of chili, some ideas to use up the remainder include chili cheese dogs, chili mac n cheese, and topping baked potatoes with a scoop for a filling meal or snack.
This is a super simple soup made from the vegetables I could afford, and a few chicken drumsticks which were on sale. It doesn’t take much to make a delicious, warming pot of soup. It’s healthy, cheap, and keeps you from getting sick (or sicker). It’s science.
Ingredients:
2 carrots, sliced
2 potatoes, diced
1/3 cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup lentils
2 chicken drumsticks
About 10 cups water
Garlic salt to taste
You can see here my meals for the day, planned out and packed to go. Oatmeal with a cut up apple for breakfast, a leftover stuffed pepper for lunch, and soup in the crock pot for dinner.
Chicken often goes on sale, sometimes for as little as 88 cents per pound. When you find a really great deal, snag some extra to freeze for future use.
Step 1: Cut up all your veggies.
Step 2: Put them in a pot with the water, rice, lentils, and chicken, leave in crock pot on low for 4-8 hours. Or, you can simmer in a pot on the stove for 1-3 hours.
This whole pot of soup is only $1.25! Plus a negligible amount from the water used and garlic salt. I ended up having about five servings, meaning each huge steaming bowl was only $0.25!
Soup is a great catch-all, you can add in any leftover vegetable odds and ends from the refrigerator. Same goes for odds and ends of meat. Meat with bones will give the broth extra flavor. This is a great use for a whole chicken, enjoy the meat other ways, then use the bones for soup stock. It’s just one more way to squeeze every last penny out of your food dollars.
**UPDATE: The SNAP Challenge is complete, with many lessons learned! All SNAP Meal Recipes listed below:
