Showing posts with label crcockpot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crcockpot. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tex-Mex Night

Let me take a few lines here to sing the many praises of the crockpot. The crock-pot slow cooker was first marketed in 1971 by Naxon. A crock pot is plugged into the wall and heats food by wattage, not temperature. As a result, liquid on the outside of the pot may lightly boil, but the food on the inside will be cooked slowly and deliciously. I love being able to throw a bunch of things into a crockpot in the morning and then come home to a delicious dinner. They are great for stews and sauces and chili.
I have a small crockpot that makes enough for 4 people, which is the perfect size for dinner one night and leftovers the next day. The center of my crockpot even comes out for easy cleaning. I have been known to cook something in my crock-pot, let it cool, refrigerate it over night, let it come to room temperature, and heat it the next day. I'm not sure how this is from a food safety perspective, but as a vegan I don't exactly need to worry about salmonella from my raw chicken, now do I?
Anyway, I threw together a recipe for vegetarian chili that came out quite good. I also made corn-bread muffins to go with it. My boyfriend doesn't like dry, crumbly corn-bread. In an effort to impress him, I set about making the moistest, sweetest cornbread I could come up with. Sometimes I have a tendency to overdo things, so the muffins came out tasting more like corn cupcakes. I will not be reprinting that recipe here, but I thought that inquiring minds would want to know about the muffins in the picture.