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[Rolan7]

I don't have good advice, just experience making lazy basically-unseasoned crockpot "stews" because I love vegetables.

I'd use the liquid in the cans because a lot of the nutrients are leached into that water - like how boiling-draining loses a lot.  Just be aware that a lot of canned veggies have surprising amounts of added sugar.  Not bad, but something to know when choosing what else to add.

Generally I throw only 1 or 2 cups of rice into a whole crockpot of veggies.  It expands a lot, even though I'm usually throwing it in for the last hour.  But I also eat my veggie stews along with some bread, so more grain might work well for you.

That said, I accidentally left my crockpot running for an extra four hours the other day (for a total of , and the rice practically melted.  It was pretty great!  Like unsweet rice-pudding surrounding tender vegetables.  Or, as many would probably say, "an actual stew dummy".  I was out of potatoes.

Good luck have fun!

Edit for bonus:  Hell yeah, I usually throw in some low-quality pork or chicken.  Any amount of stewing just makes them tender and good.

[Parsely]

Hell yeah! Time to go buy some chicken. Will post results.

Also, this crockpot user manual I found online (mine was a hand me down so it didn't come with instructions) actually has some pretty awesome tips on cooking: https://www.crock-pot.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-crock-pot-Library/default/dw73067990/documents/instruction-manuals/SCCPVL610-S_43_92561418.PDF

[Rolan7]

Neat!  And like those recipes suggest, you don't want to use *good* meat in this.  Slow-cooking is amazing for taking stringy, tough beef cuts and making them tender as filet mignon.  That's less of a factor for pork, but I prefer pork and chicken, so I do go for the cheapest cuts of pork (or any chicken, doesn't matter).  My grocery store has special stew-cuts of pork which are probably awful compared to a typical pork chop.  Certainly cheaper, and already cut into convenient cubes of fatty meat.

Which is exactly what you want!  Fatty low-quality meats are perfect for seasoning the vegetables and grain with savory flavor, and meeting protein/unsaturated fat needs.  You don't have to add any oil.

I do vegan vegetable stews over half the time, technically.  Throwing in miso or TVP.  But stewed pork or chicken are more memorable.

[Parsely]

Next time I should ask the deli for the shitty cuts instead of going for the packaged meat, I might've got a better price. My rice is cooking away now, I'm nervous to see how it'll turn out!

Unrelated: I bought some blueberry kefir while I was at the store because my slav coworker was talking about it and oh my goodness this stuff is unpalatable. There's got to be a better way to eat this stuff, the flavor is overpowering!!!

[Rolan7]

I couldn't stand kefir either, though I was young last I tried.  So strong.

I associate it with kombucha, which is completely different.  Worth a taste, though.  It's super-dwarven - a disc mushroom, which you grow by putting a "slice" into a sugar bath for a while, and it "ferments" into legally nonalcoholic drink (like typical apple juice).  It tastes *STRONG* though, even by my jaded palate.

My family got a starter from an awesome wanderer visited our home, a literal mile from any neighbors, talking about how the water smelled good.

I'm sure my hippy techie dad was ready to fight, but acted with diplomacy and made a friend.  Trust but verify?  The guy was so weird but it turned out way better than expected.
Of course nowadays you can just buy kombucha from many coffee shops, or whole-food stores.

But back then it was a hippy handshake sort of deal, heh.

[Cruxador]

OK so I'm using my crockpot for the first time. I want to make spanish rice!

"Spanish" rice is Paella? I reckon doing it in a crockpot'll make it mushier than it ought to be.

[spoiler]how much rice do I use given the amount of veggies and beans I want to add?[/quote]Pretty sure you can mess with that according to your own taste too.

Do I need to drain the cans or is it better to incorporate the water in the mix? How much water needs to be in the crockpot overall?

It's a hard question, because on one hand you ought to have the rice properly immersed so it absorbs the water, on the other, it won't bake properly with too much water and a crock pot doesn't really simmer off the liquid properly. I'd say start it out without draining.

How long do I cook this for? Bonus alternate scenario: If I bought some chicken can I just throw it in there without changing any of my parameters?

Chicken shouldn't be undercooked, so you'll want four hours on the high setting or eight on the low setting. High setting's gonna be better here.

My rice is cooking away now, I'm nervous to see how it'll turn out!

Well let's hear how it turns out then.

[Parsely]

You need to know that sometimes when people say "Spanish" in the USA they sometimes mean "Mexican". In Arizona and most places on the border "Spanish rice" is a Mexican food with rice and tomatoes in it. So no, not Paella.

Very pleased with the result! I think I added a little too much rice because it got gummy, like there wasn't enough water!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Kagus]

I couldn't stand kefir either, though I was young last I tried.  So strong.

I associate it with kombucha, which is completely different.  Worth a taste, though.  It's super-dwarven - a disc mushroom, which you grow by putting a "slice" into a sugar bath for a while, and it "ferments" into legally nonalcoholic drink (like typical apple juice).  It tastes *STRONG* though, even by my jaded palate.

My family got a starter from an awesome wanderer visited our home, a literal mile from any neighbors, talking about how the water smelled good.

I'm sure my hippy techie dad was ready to fight, but acted with diplomacy and made a friend.  Trust but verify?  The guy was so weird but it turned out way better than expected.
Of course nowadays you can just buy kombucha from many coffee shops, or whole-food stores.

But back then it was a hippy handshake sort of deal, heh.

Technically not a mushroom, although some of the technical etymology is based on the greek word for mushroom. It's a symbiotic culture of yeast and bacteria (something apparently called a SCOBY), where the yeast converts the sugars to alcohol, and then the bacteria converts the alcohol to acid.


Regarding slow cooker chicken, all the recipes I've seen have called for remarkably low cook times, like 4-5 low, 3 high. Still, it doesn't exactly hurt to let it sit a while longer (although it will start toughening up eventually), and much better to have it a bit overcooked than undercooked.

Going to be throwing some chicken in the pot myself later on today. Had a previous experiment work out fairly well, so now I aim to expand upon it.

It's pretty simple, because there's not really a whole lot we have access to that would fit in with the overall theme. And I just now remembered while writing this that I forgot to pick something up at the store... dagnabbit.

But yeah, basically just chicken, sliced bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, coconut milk and some paneng curry paste from the Vietnamese corner shop (who also stock Thai necessities, apparently). Rice would be nice, or maybe some tofu, but those both fall under the umbrella of unacceptable carbs, so no go.

I asked the lady at the Vietnamese/Thai place if they had lemongrass, and she said no... So I'm going to assume that I didn't know how to ask for it (finding the right name for ingredients can be tricky when you're asking across 3-4 different languages)... So the intent was to add some lime juice to the mix, which worked out quite nicely last time. But guess what I just realized I forgot to pick up? Yeah.

Well, maybe it's for the best... was planning on throwing some cashews in there, maybe along with a spoon of peanut butter, and I'm not sure how that all would have mixed together with the citrus.

[Rolan7]

Thanks for the kombucha klarification, Kagus!  And yeah, those times seem about right for slow-cooking chicken.  I prefer to cook chicken in a pan, though, I use slow-cooking on tough beef or fatty cuts of pork.
Ooof...  My dad's refrigerator broke down this morning.  We managed to get it working again, but all his frozen meats thawed.  He gave me about half for helping out, since it all needed to be cooked today.  Seems weird that it works like that, but he insisted that re-frozen meat will rot in the freezer.

The ground beef was the easy part.  I made about half of it into whole-wheat burritos with some cheese and spinach, then stir-fried some rice in the grease.  I had to just store the rice and second half of the cooked beef.  (My housemate insisted that I let the tupperware of food cool to room temperature before going in the refrigerator, or else *it* would somehow rot too.  Which I think is hooey, but I was about to experience a food coma, and didn't really care)

The hard part was almost a dozen small coastal fish dad caught while kayaking.  Cleaned, but full of tiny bones.  I didn't eat any tonight, but my housemate helped by baking a bunch.  He can't eat the beef or sausage, after all.  He also baked some chicken dumplings (despite the instructions saying to boil them, but whatever.  Baking browned them nicely, and they definitely reached internal temperature).

We were cooking for like two hours and didn't even finish all the fish, or start cooking the breakfast sausage.  It was a long day though, and 95F.  I'm sure the sausage will be fine in the fridge.

I know this post is "First World Problems" to the max - but *I* don't eat meat most days!  This windfall is very difficult on my stomach, actually!  But it's really great, and I'm learning how to properly store leftovers heh.  I'm really trying to avoid any wastage.

[Yoink]

Forgot to post this a couple of weeks ago, but one day when I didn't have time to prepare a proper lunch, I pioneered the technique of eating hommus with pretzels. It actually worked really well!
The odd shape of the pretzels mean that it's easy to get a reasonable amount of hommus, without going overboard (as it is so easy to do with a crisp or cracker) and polishing off all your hommus too quickly, leaving a bunch of snacks without any dip to dunk in. The textures and tastes complimented one another quite well, too. All in all it was a great success. Feel free to use my idea, we could start a new trend!

I'm trying to come up with a good hashtag now... #pretzelsandhommus is the obvious one, but does anyone have any catchier ideas?    

[Mephisto]

I'm trying to come up with a good hashtag now... #pretzelsandhommus is the obvious one, but does anyone have any catchier ideas?    

#peainmyfacewithsaltyrods

[Trekkin]

I'm trying to come up with a good hashtag now... #pretzelsandhommus is the obvious one, but does anyone have any catchier ideas?

#ThatThingYou'veAllBeenDoingWithCrunchyThingsAndHommusAllAlongIsATrendNow

[MrRoboto75]

#MillennialsAreBuyingPrezelsAndHumusInsteadOfRealEstate

[Cruxador]

Chard is a great green for all kinds of things. But chard in frittata is a whole nother level.

[Kagus]

I, meanwhile, have finally cracked the art of successfully cooking pasta Cacio e Pepe. The trick, evidently, was a matter of only adding an equal part of pasta water to your oil before adding the pasta, then adding all the necessary cheese, before adding any additional pasta water. Add too much, and you're left with pasta coated lightly in oil with some pepper, all of the cheese now left behind in the pan.

Who would've thunk that pasta with 3 ingredients (pepper, olive oil, pecorino Romano) could take so many attempts to get right.

That's the thing though; the fewer ingredients involved in a recipe, the more precise you need to be with the ingredients that are involved.

Like, you can get a pretty decent stew by just tossing random things into a pot and letting it cook. Making a quality steak, however, is much more demanding. The "simpler" the recipe, the more careful you need to be while making it.