Light Slow Cooker Meatloaf and My Dukan Progress

Tags

crockpot, dukan, ground beef, meatloaf, minced beef, oat bran, slow cooker

I’m really happy today. I’m only 600 grams away from the target weight I set for myself only 2.5 weeks ago, which means I’ve lost 3 kilos (about 6 pounds)! That’s pretty amazing if you ask me. It hasn’t been particularly hard, apart from the one day I wanted sushi and could only have sashimi, and the evening The Mister and I went out for dinner and his plate of chips (French fries) was sitting under my nose while I was eating plain grilled chicken. Hopefully the next phase which for me will last just over a month, will be as easy. I think that’s where most people give in to temptation!

Last week I was feeling adventurous, and fancied something different for dinner. The Dukan book has a recipe for meatloaf in it, so that gave me the idea to try my own version of this classic dish. The book version seemed ok, but I wanted to add my required daily dose of oat bran to the mix, since meatloaf normally includes bread. I also wanted to make it in the slow cooker, as my oven is currently on holiday. Temperatures here these days are crazy high, or at least the feels-like factor is, so the heat from the slow cooker is about as much as I can handle. I looked up a few recipes, and in the end decided to follow this one from the Betty Crocker site as a guide but with a couple of changes.

The result made me very happy indeed! I really love it when I experiment and get good results, it makes me feel very creative. The meatloaf was just right, but because this is a light (diet) version it’s not overly moist. In terms of the Dukan Diet, this can be eaten in all phases. Just make sure you calculate how much extra oat bran you need to eat on that day, so you reach the required 1 ½ or 2 Tbs. This recipe uses 2 Tbs for the whole thing, so if you eat half of it, you’ll want another ½ or 1 Tbs depending on which phase you are on.

Before moving on to the recipe, I have to also mention the fab idea I got from Stephanie O’Dea’s website, in the comment section. A reader sent her an email suggesting she uses an upside-down aluminium pan with holes punched in, to put the meatloaf on inside the slow cooker so the fat drains away from the meat. I used throw away aluminium muffin cups, placed upside down! Even better than a pan, because they fit in the insert easier. I made some holes, but I think next time I won’t bother, as most of the fat will drain away down the sides of the cups.

I should also mention that The Mister ate this happily, with mashed potatoes (*sigh*) and gravy (which I made from granules – it can’t all be from scratch!). So it’s definitely good enough for non-dieters!

So, here is my
Light Slow Cooker Meatloaf aka Dukan Slow Cooker Meatloaf
Serves 2 hungry people, or 3 less so

What you need:
500g minced/ground beef (as lean as possible)
1 small onion, minced or finely chopped
1 egg
¾ Tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs chopped parsley
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
1/3 tsp mustard powder
2 Tbs oat bran soaked in 3 Tbs milk (0% for Dukan dieters) for a couple of minutes

What you do:

1. In a large bowl mix beef, onion, egg, Worcestershire sauce, parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, mustard and oat bran (spooned out of milk). Knead with your hands until just incorporated. Don’t over knead because apparently this makes the meatloaf denser.
2. Check how moist the mixture is. If it’s not too wet, add a tablespoon or 2 of the milk which had the oat bran in.
3. Put a meatloaf insert or upside down aluminium muffin cups into the slow cooker.
4. Shape the meat mixture into a loaf and place on top of the insert/muffin cups. You can pop it directly into the slow cooker but there will be fatty juices accumulating around it during cooking. If you’re on a diet I suggest you elevate the meat so it’s drier.
5. Cook it on low for 6-8 hours. I cooked it for 1 hour on high then switched to low for another 5. The meat will brown a little but not too much; it won’t look like it does in the oven! Check doneness with a food thermometer, which should read at least 160F.
6. Let it rest for about half an hour before slicing.

Note: Most recipes I came across have ketchup or BBQ sauce spread on top during cooking. This wouldn’t be Dukan friendly so I didn’t do it. If you try it I’d love to know how it works out!

Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken & Summer Vegetables – Starting the Dukan

Tags

balsamic, chicken, crockpot, diet, dukan, slow cooker, vegetables

Last week I finally made a decision – to lose some weight. For a while now I’ve been complaining about how over the past 5 years of so my weight has crept up and how yucky it’s making me feel. I’m not overweight, but at the moment I’m suffering from a seriously challenging wardrobe. I’ve also felt the difference in my horse-riding, with low energy levels and too tight jodhpurs. So the moment came when I felt strong enough to step away from the chocolate cookie and do something other than whine. In the past I’d heard about the Dukan Diet, but thought it was a bit too drastic for my few extra pounds. However, it’s summer (shorts, bikinis etc… you know) and generally I’m much better at following exact instructions than just “watching what I eat”, so I read his book. It makes so much sense! I found myself really interested in the theory and actually quite excited to start.

Well, I’m now 6 days into it. The initial excitement has somewhat evaporated, but my resolve has not. For those of you who know a bit about it, I’m now on the Cruise phase, so I’m eating pure protein one day, and protein plus vegetables the next. This is how it goes on now, with alternating days, until I reach my desired weight. I’ve no idea how long it’s going to take but I’m hoping it won’t be too long.

To be honest when I started last Monday, I was a bit worried that my blog was going to suffer. But looking into it a bit more has eased my mind, as there seem to be many interesting recipes that have been designed especially for this diet, as well as others that by chance suit it perfectly. Like this one! Chicken is one of the main foods of this diet, as it is a lean meat and has plenty of protein. Ok, ideally you should eat it grilled, so any fat drains away, but I think I can get away with cooking it in the slow cooker since you don’t need any oil to do so. In this recipe by Stephanie O’Dea (the CrockPot Queen in my opinion), the chicken and veg are cooked in balsamic vinegar and a bit of Worcestershire sauce. So simple and yet so flavourful. Vinegar is allowed, as are certain condiments in small quantities. So this seemed an ideal choice. I made a few adjustments to suit our taste and the result was really good, especially the vegetables which were absolutely gorgeous. The chicken was good too, and the vinegar even gave it a slight brown colour which was quite appealing. It was very tender and tasty. The remaining sauce was a bit bland, but that’s because vegetables release a lot of water so the stock was largely diluted. I didn’t have any of it because the meat and veggies were juicy enough and I was worried it might have a higher fat content since the chicken had cooked in it. For The Mister however I saved some of the liquid, brought it to a boil in the microwave, and stuck a teaspoon of gravy granules in. That did the trick and voila… a lovely sauce to go over his chicken and rice. I really enjoyed this dinner, even though I was eyeing The Mister’s rice with envy the whole time!

Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken with Summer Vegetables
Serves 3

What you need:
3 chicken legs, bone in (skin on or off, it’s up to you. I think the skin keeps the outer layer from drying out, but a lot of people don’t like the idea of the skin cooking in the slow cooker)
2 red peppers (I use a Greek type that’s a bit longer than bell pepper, but bell would be great)
1 green bell pepper
1 orange bell pepper
1 large courgette (zucchini)
1 onion
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

What you do:

1. Rinse the chicken pieces, pat dry with kitchen paper, and put in the slow cooker.
2. Chop the veggies into large pieces and put them in a bowl.
3. Mix the balsamic vinegar with the Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper and pour over the veggies.
4. Toss vegetables in the vinegar mix till they are well coated.
5. Place the veggies on top of the chicken in the slow cooker and pour the vinegar mix over it all.
6. Turn slow cooker to low and cook for 8 hours.
7. Serve with rice, quinoa or mashed potatoes, or eat as is if you’re on the Dukan Diet.

Note: Feel free to experiment with the vegetables. You could also try aubergines (eggplant) or summer squash. Carrots would be nice but I’m not sure if they’d soften in time. If you try them maybe put them under the chicken and let me know how it turns out!

Stuffed Courgettes (Zucchini) with Egg Lemon Sauce – My Slow Cooker Success

Tags

avgolemono, courgettes, crockpot, egg lemon sauce, Greek, slow cooker, vegetables, zucchini

A couple of weeks ago I decided to experiment with another slow cooker adaptation. I had prepared myself towards a possible flop because after all, I was trying something quite tricky. I started by looking for a traditional recipe for this dish as it wasn’t something I knew off by heart. I’d only ever made it once, the regular way, a few years ago. I found one I liked the look of, and kept the quantities to a minimum, just so that if it was going to be a disaster, I wouldn’t end up hyperventilating at the waste of good food! Well. I needn’t have worried! After the first taste test I was high fiving myself, punching the air and doing a little victory dance round the house. Yes, I was mighty proud of myself, and I still wear a bit of a smug expression when I look at the pictures!

So, Stuffed Courgettes (or Zucchini if you’re reading from the US) in an Egg Lemon Sauce. Delicious. Ok, I admit, anything in egg lemon sauce is delicious for me, but this dish really is good. Here in Greece, up until a few years ago, you could only get the long green courgettes. Recently though, you see these really cute variations that have the same colour and taste, only they look like they’ve swallowed a tennis ball! Seriously, I find their almost perfect round shape hilarious, I don’t know why. When I saw some in the supermarket I thought right, I am going to try these stuffed, in the slow cooker. Actually they are ideal for stuffing as they have so much flesh, thus lots of room for filling, once the flesh is removed.

Now I must warn you, this isn’t a throw-everything-into-the-slow-cooker-and-turn-on type of recipe. It takes some prepping. But it’s worth it, and you do avoid the whole palaver of trying to boil the stuffed zuckes with an upside-down plate lying on top of them (yes, I know, weird – I think it’s to stop them moving around).

I’m not big on taking photos of each step when trying a recipe, usually because it’s what’s for dinner and needs to be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Also, more often than not, I’ll forget to snap a step or two and then it’s all messed up anyway. This time however, I couldn’t resist a couple of extra photos during the preparation of the courgettes – they are just so pretty. And I thought it might help readers to visualise certain aspects of the process (i.e. gutting the zuckes). And they’re so pretty.
So, here they are. See I told you they were cute (ok, sorry, I’ll stop now). You start by slicing the tops off, to make little lids. Keep them aside. To get the insides out I suggest the following tools: a knife (smallish, you want good control) and –ideally- a melon scoop (at least I think that’s what that is). What a useful contraption. It came in a set of three, a citrus zester, an apple corer and this spoon-like thing that looks like a mini ice cream scoop with a hole the middle. I gather it’s for making little balls of melon or watermelon. It’s great for scooping out the courgette flesh because it’s sharpish around the edge and you can position it at a good angle inside. So, you start scooping leaving a wall around the bottom and sides of the veg. You want them to be sturdy enough to hold, but you also want room for a decent amount of filling. I left just under one centimeter of flesh. It’s a good idea to lift the courgettes and hold them in your hands while scooping; this way you can sort of feel how close you’re getting to the sides. If you’re using regular, long zucchini you might find an apple corer useful, at least in the beginning. After you get the first chunks out continue with a small spoon.

Remember you need to keep the flesh. Some of it goes in the recipe, some of it you can keep for something else. I made the most unbelievable zucchini bread and was planning on doing a double post today; then I promptly ate the two last pieces before I’d taken any photos of it. I do that often, I think I’d have twice as many posts up already if I remembered to take pictures of all the things I make. Aaanyway. The two round zuckes gave me 1 ¼ cups of flesh. This of course largely depends on the size of the vegetables.

After I made the filling and stuffed the two courgettes I discovered that I had quite a bit of filling left over. I rummaged through the produce drawer in the fridge and discovered this lovely white aubergine (eggplant), so out it came. The two zuckes fit perfectly in my slow cooker (it’s only a small one), leaving no room for anything else. So now I also had to employ the services of my second slow cooker! Now that the extra room issue was solved I decided to plop some potatoes and carrots in with the aubergine as well. All set.After they cooked for about 5 ½ hours on low and were pretty much ready, I decided to make the egg lemon sauce. This is easy, but needs some attention when it’s transferred back into the slow cooker. I tempered the eggs (for more details on this see my Egg Lemon Chicken Soup) and then poured the sauce into the slow cookers with the veg and left it for about 5 minutes on low. I then tested the sauce with a food thermometer and it was well over 140F which is the minimum for cooking eggs, so I turned the cookers to warm and served shortly afterwards. The total cooking time was about 6-6 ½ hours.

Result? Gorgeous. Really tasty. And I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t fall apart when I took them out of the slow cooker. The courgette skins had cooked to a perfect consistency. Not pull-apart-with-your-fork soft but cut-with-the-side-of-your-fork soft. The eggplant was also just right, as were the potatoes and the carrots. Success!

Slow Cooker Stuffed Zucchini in Egg Lemon Sauce
Serves 2-3

What you need:
2 large or 3 medium round courgettes (zucchini). You can use long ones, I’d say probably 4 large (I suggest you have one or two extra on hand in case you end up with lots of leftover filling. Don’t gut the extras till you know you need them, to avoid waste)
200g minced/ground meat (I used a combination or beef and pork)
½ medium onion, minced
2 Tbs fresh chopped parsley
2 Tbs fresh chopped dill weed
¼ cup risotto rice (like Arborio)
Salt and pepper
½ tsp dried thyme
1/3 cup olive oil
1 ½ cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 egg
Juice of ½ lemon

What you do:

1. Slice off the top of the courgettes in order to form little lids. Scoop out the insides as described above, leaving a wall of flesh around the inside of the veg.
2. Keep ¼ cup of the flesh and chop it up. Put the rest away in the fridge till you find a good recipe for it.
3. Heat half the olive oil in a frying pan, over medium heat. Gently cook the onion being careful it doesn’t brown or burn, till it’s translucent.
4. Add the meat to the pan, and turn up the heat to medium high. Break up the meat clumps with a wooden spoon and keep stirring till you don’t see any more pink bits.
5. Add the parsley, dill weed, courgette flesh, rice and salt & pepper, turn down the heat a bit and continue to gently sauté over a medium heat, for about 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously.
6. Add ¼ cup water to the pan, and let it reduce, stirring the meat mixture frequently.
7. When the water has reduced almost completely, take the mixture off the heat and leave to cool slightly. Use a spoon to fill the vegetables with the meat mixture, leaving a couple of centimeters space from the top.
8. Replace the lids on the vegetables and put them in the slow cooker.
9. Add 1 ½ cups of vegetable stock to the slow cookers, so that the liquid comes up the sides of the courgettes by about 1/3.
10. Turn slow cooker on and cook on low for about 5 ½ hours. We have mostly cooked the meat, so the only thing that needs cooking really is the rice.
11. After 5 ½ hours try prying open one of the lids, and lifting out some filling. You will see it will have increased in volume and may now reach the top. If the rice is cooked and soft you can go on to make the egg lemon sauce.
12. Beat the egg and lemon juice in a medium/large bowl. Slowly add spoonfuls of the cooking liquid into the egg mixture, one at a time, being careful that the egg doesn’t scramble.
13. As you add the warm liquid you can slowly increase the size of the spoonfuls. When the mixture in your bowl is quite warm, with lots of the juice in it, take out the insert of your slow cooker and set it somewhere heat-safe. Carefully pour the egg lemon mixture back into the slow cooker, lift it and swirl it around to mix it.
14. Put the insert back into the slow cooker and leave on low for about 5 minutes. This should do it in terms of egg cooking time.
15. If you want to be sure, test the sauce with a thermometer; it should be over 140F.
16. Take out the veggies, spoon some sauce over them and enjoy with fresh bread and feta cheese.

For ideas on what to do with the leftover zucchini flesh, take a wander over to Kalyn’s Kitchen. She has lots of lovely recipes for this wonderful veg, including these gorgeous Whole Wheat Zucchini Muffins with Green Chiles and Cheese. I’ve made these and they’re yummy.

Revithia from Sifnos (Traditional Chickpea Soup)

Tags

chickpeas, crockpot, garbanzo, revithia, slow cooker, soup

Antique German silver spoon on kind loan from The Collector

Well, it had to come to this.. me writing a post while waiting for the metro. Oops, now on the metro..! Lately it seems that time is running away from me, or rather sprinting away at top speed. Since my last post a couple of things have happened to keep me busy (a trip to a food & drink exhibition in England, burglars breaking into my flat, you know, everyday stuff) but mostly my energy is being sapped by The Day Job.

Anyway, yesterday I managed to go back to a recipe I tried a while ago. In my last post I mentioned trying something that turned out mediocre. Well, I fixed it! This time it’s good. And it’s ideal for this week as today is Holy Wednesday (for the Greek Orthodox Church) and we have decided to go meatless until Easter Sunday. Nice and traditional and a good opportunity to detox a little, with Revithia Soup from the beautiful island of Sifnos. Revithia is the Greek word for chickpeas or garbanzo beans. On Sifnos they cook the soup in clay pots that go in the oven overnight on a low temperature. So, guess where I cooked it? The slow cooker of course!!

I’ve tried cooking chickpeas in the slow cooker in the past, as I cook other types of beans, but the result wasn’t as nice as the tinned variety which has a lovely consistency. When I tried this recipe the first time, the soup was a little bland, but the actual beans were very nice. So I drained them and used them in a salad (the pretty picture below) and this gorgeous sandwich filling from Two Peas and Their Pod. This time round I thought I’d make a simple change and try it again as a soup. I substituted some of the water with veggie broth and it made all the difference. The soup turned out really tasty but it’s still nice and light, with a delicate flavor. If you make a big batch you can eat all the soup you want, then drain the rest of the beans and use them as you would the canned sort. Or divide them into cupfuls, stick them in plastic zip lock bags and freeze them for later. You could even keep the broth and use it in stews etc. How sensible is that?

Revithia from Sifnos (Traditional Chickpea Soup)
Serves 2 (generously)

What you’ll need
1 cup dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans) soaked overnight
½ Tbs baking soda
1 yellow onion (peeled and cut in half)
3 Tbs olive oil
2 tsp salt
4-5 grinds of black pepper
2 bay leaves
2 cups vegetable broth
2.5 cups water

What you do

1)      As I mentioned above, the chickpeas need to be soaked overnight before they are cooked. Stick them in a bowl, cover with loads of water and leave them for 8-12 hours.
2)      Drain the beans and discard the water. Sprinkle the baking soda over the beans and mix well. Leave them for 10 minutes or longer and then rinse really really well with fresh water. You need to the give them at least 5 rinses otherwise they go black (apparently).
3)      Put them in the slow cooker and add the rest of the ingredients. I don’t chop the onion because the bits annoy me, but you can if you want.
4)      Cook for at least 8 hours on low and check for doneness. Mine were on for 9.5 hours (because I was at work) and they were lovely.
5)      Chuck the onion if it wasn’t chopped.
6)      Serve with lots of fresh lemon juice and bread.

Colourful salad with lettuce, valeriana, red bell pepper, tuna and chickpeas

Pork Lemonato and a Blogger’s Nightmare

Tags

crockpot, lemon, lemonato, pork, slow cooker

Pork Lemonato, on antique English porcelain courtesy of The Collector

It seems I’ve fallen into a nice little routine of posting a new blog post every Sunday. However, this week I’m getting in an extra one(um, I was supposed to have this uploaded on Thursday. Saturday instead of Sunday isn’t quite breaking the routine!). Anyway.

The past week has actually been a bit of a food blogger’s nightmare. First came a recipe I hoped would rock, but it turned out mediocre (will try it again before posting). This was Monday. Two days later I had a minor disaster when I forgot to turn on the slow cooker before leaving for work in the morning, and a whole turkey breast sat waiting for me all day to get home and cook it some other way (thank goodness it’s still cold these days, otherwise it would have ended up in the bin and that would have been a crime). In the end I tried two different ways, since there was a lot of meat to use up. One of these ways was a turkey korma, with a ready-made sauce (*gasp*). Sometimes shop-bought is just the best option. We’re only human. The other way however, well, that was absolutely gorgeous! But the third and most annoying disaster of the week was that I forgot to take photos of it. So I’ll just have to make it again before telling you all about it. Soon, very soon.

Finally, and having remembered to both plug in the slow cooker and turn it on this morning last Thursday, I have a dish to talk about, complete with photo (antique plate an’ all – thanks Collector!).

I’ve been wanting lately to try out a few traditional Greek recipes adapted for the slow cooker. Greek cuisine has many stew type dishes, which are called “of the saucepan” (katsarolas) because they are –surprise- cooked in a saucepan on the stove top. These are all good candidates and I’m slowly working my way through some of them, so I can share them with you here.

This dish is called Lemonato, which means “lemony”. It’s basically meat, cooked in stock and lemon juice with a few herbs and is usually made with pork, beef, chicken or rabbit (yeah, sorry about that). Mine is pork. Lemonato is mostly served with french fries or rice, or potatoes that are cooked in the pan with the meat and sauce (we had it with mashed potatoes, which is probably unheard of here!). It’s lovely with any of these, but to eat it like a true Greek, you need to also have some crusty bread on hand to scoop up the wonderful lemony sauce. So, here goes.

Pork Lemonato
Serves 3

You’ll need:
700g pork, cut into portions or chunks
2 carrots, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup water
juice of 1 ½ lemons
1 medium onion, minced or chopped
1 tsp mustard
1 sprig of rosemary (about 7-8cm/3in)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper (or to taste)
1 Tbs corn flour (to thicken sauce at the end – if needed)

What you do:

1. Put the carrots and onion in the bottom of the slow cooker
2. Put the pork pieces on top
3. Mix the liquids and mustard together and pour over the meat
4. Add salt & pepper, bay leaf and rosemary
5. Cook on low for 8 hours
6. About half an hour before the end of cooking time check your sauce. If it’s too watery for your liking, use a cup to take some of the liquid out of the slow cooker (you want about ¾ of a cup). Mix in the corn flour, and stir well until it has completely dissolved. Then pour it all back in and cook for a further 30 minutes on high.

(Writing instructions for slow cooker recipes is brilliant)

Due to this being a work day, mine was on for about 9 ½ hours. I think there is a point after which meat becomes a bit tough again in the slow cooker. I’m not sure about this, so I’m going to experiment, but it’s happened a couple of times with some of the recipes I’ve tried, including this one. If you have any idea whether this is the case, please let me know!

This was a really nice dinner, and made even nicer leftovers, but next time I would start checking for doneness after about 7 hours (providing I’m not stuck in my office). I might also omit the rosemary (it was a teeny bit strong for my taste) or maybe replace it with some dried oregano (½ tsp at the most).

Hope you like it!

Bolognese Sauce, In My Favourite Kitchen Gadget

Tags

bolognese, crockpot, ground beef, meat sauce, minced meat, slow cooker, spaghetti

And now for a slow cooker recipe!

The Christmas before last, my mum and I visited my brother and his wife who live in England. My brother is a talented cook, who mostly (unlike me) relies on his imagination to throw together yummy meals. At the time, he had recently discovered the magical world of slow cookers and raved about his new appliance. One evening during our stay we had a gorgeous beef stew which was miraculously waiting for us when we got home from a hard day’s money-spending. It was cool, and I had read about slow cookers a couple of years previously thinking “I should get one of those”, but actually I was not that bothered – I have no idea why. Luckily my mum knows me better than I know myself, and when she returned to Greece two days after me, she surprised me with a gorgeous little purple Crock Pot which she had lugged all the way back for me. Well, I can safely say this has now become my favourite kitchen gadget (um, after my iphone of course).

To be honest, this didn’t happen overnight. As I mentioned in my first post I like to follow recipes. So to start using my slow cooker I turned to –where else- the internet, to find some. I searched and searched, but wasn’t very happy with what I found. It seemed that most recipes were for a pot roast of some kind and always involved tins of cream of something soup, or dried soup, or jars of ready-made sauce. Don’t get me wrong, flipping back the ring of a can of Heinz Tomato Soup is one of my favourite ways to make dinner, but “recipes” featuring, for example, a can of cream of chicken AND a can of cheese soup (which I didn’t even know existed till then) did not sound very appealing. I was starting to feel quite disappointed when I stumbled on A Year of Slow Cooking. Now that was more like it! A blog with a healthy balance of mostly “from scratch” meals, but with a few quick and easy solutions for when you just can’t be bothered! Plus the added bonus of Stephanie’s great sense of humour. That’s when I got well and truly hooked on the slow cooker. A few months later I started using Twitter (an obsession I’ll talk about another time) which introduced me to a whole new world of food blogs, such as Kalyn’s Kitchen, The Perfect Pantry, Healthy Green Kitchen to name but a few. These all include some great slow cooker recipes, and Kalyn has now started a new site called Slow Cooker From Scratch, a great place to find exciting Crock Pot recipes – and not a tin of soup in sight…!

My Bolognese Sauce is based on a recipe by a well known Greek TV chef called Elias Mamalakis, who is also the publishing manager of the Greek version of the BBC’s Olive magazine. I have adapted the original stove top recipe for the slow cooker. What I usually do is make a batch and freeze half of it, either to use in a mini lasagne for two, or for a quick, easy meal after a long day at work. I hope you like it!

Slow Cooker Bolognese Sauce
Serves 4

You’ll need:
1 Tbs olive oil
500g minced (ground) beef
3 Tbs white wine vinegar
1 Tbs onion powder or 1 small onion, chopped finely
1 tin / 400g chopped tomatoes
1 cup / 250ml tomato passata (passata is a thick juice made from crushed and sieved tomatoes. Find more information here)
½ cup / 125ml vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp sugar

What you do:

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan, over medium heat. If you are using regular onion instead of dried, add it to the pan and cook it gently until translucent, about 5 minutes. If not, heat the oil over medium high heat and start at step 2.
2. Turn the heat up to medium high, and add the minced meat. With a wooden spoon break up the minced meat as much as possible and keep stirring until there are no more pink bits.
3. Add the vinegar to the pan, and keep stirring the meat until the vinegar evaporates and the juices start to reduce. A couple of minutes should be fine.
4. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the meat to the slow cooker. Add one tablespoon of pan juices. How much juice you get after frying will depend on how fatty your meat was. If it was lean you probably won’t have much, so just tip the contents of the pan into the slow cooker without worrying about slotted spoons and all that.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker. Give it all a stir.
6. Turn slow cooker to low and cook for at least 8 hours. Mine usually stays on for about 9-9 ½. I’ve never cooked this on high, so I don’t know how long you should leave it, I assume about 5 or 6 hours?
7. Serve over spaghetti with a generous amount of grated cheese sprinkled on top.

For those unlucky people who don’t have a slow cooker, try this:
Use 3 Tbs olive oil and only 1 cup of chopped tomatoes. Omit the stock.

• Follow steps 1 -3 above, but in a saucepan rather than a frying pan.
• Add chopped tomatoes and passata, bring to a boil.
• When it starts bubbling add the spices, salt, pepper and sugar (and onion if using dried).
• Stir and turn the heat down to medium low or low (depending on how hot your stove gets). You want a slow simmer. Cover the pan leaving a small gap and let the sauce simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour for best results.

Update on 30th Septmeber 2012:
Kalyn has kindly featured my recipe on Slow Cooker from Scratch! Yay! Check out the post for more fab slow cooker pasta sauce recipes, or the recipe index for loads more ideas.