Tag Archives: crockpot

Crockpot Pulled Pork Sliders

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Pulled Pork Slider

I’m not sure I fully understood and appreciated real barbeque until I moved to Brooklyn. Growing up, I thought of barbeque more as a cook out. Friends and family would come over, and we’d grill hotdogs and hamburgers, maybe some steaks if we were being really fancy. I knew of pulled pork and ribs and brisket, and sure I had them a few times, but never really craved them. My first real barbeque joint in Brooklyn was Fette Sau. If you’ve never been, you are truly missing out. Don’t expect fancy. Fette Sau in Williamsburg is a renovated garage that dishes out trays of the most delicious smoked, braised meats you could imagine. Dining is communal, picnic tables inside and out stacked with rolls of paper towels. On a Friday or Saturday night you can spot the place from the huge line that forms outside. Meat is ordered by the pound, slapped on a tray and served with as many slider buns as you can handle. Line two offers local craft beers served in mason jars, of if you have a crowd, by the gallon. Yes it’s a bit gritty but that’s what barbeque should be.

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Slow Cooked Butternut Squash & Apricot Stew

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Butternut Squash-Apricot-Stew (1)

I have a tendency to hoard food. There’s no basis for this habit. I’ve always been well fed (too well fed as my scale sometimes notes) and never gone without, but for some reason I have this anxiety that if I eat it all, I can’t get it again. Maybe it happened when I started taking this locavore thing so seriously. The realization that strawberries can’t grow year round in the northeast. I need to get my fill while they’re in season, preserve their flavors as best I can and hunker down for a round 9 months without seeing them again. By the time strawberry season finishes, I’ve stuff myself so full I can’t imagine having even the smallest of berries. That lasts for about a month or so, then the cravings return with a vengeance. Preserving helps, knowing that I have fresh strawberry jam to last the winter puts me slightly at ease. Until it doesn’t. I only have 6 jars to survive the winter (let’s forget about the other few dozen types of jam I also have stored up in my pantry). I panick. Will they really last? So I ration myself, allowing myself only a small spoonful of the sweet chunky jam every few weeks, determined to make my inventory last. Fast forward 9 months later, as strawberries start to surface at the greenmarkets and I find myself still left with 4 jars. I’ve rationed too well and find myself pushing jars of jam on everyone I know (thanks for holding the subway door for me; here, have some homemade jam) so I can start fresh in the new season.

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Intro to Crockpot Cooking: The Chicken

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Crockpot_Chicken

There are some recipes you come back to, month after month, year after year. You’ve perfected them, they are comforting and homey or sometimes just plain easy. But for whatever reason, they may somehow fall out of that regular recipe rotation. You might get sick of them. When I was a child, we had pancakes every Saturday morning. They were great–until they weren’t. When I went away to college, there was a good 5-6 years where I wanted nothing to do with pancakes, then gradually I welcomed them back into my life. Then there are recipes that slip through the cracks and you just forget about. Like Crockpot Chicken.

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Chickpeas Deserve Love Too

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ChickpeaStew (3)

How do you eat your chickpeas? Most likely it’s in hummus. If you’re really fancy, you might roast them with a little curry or chili powder. But aside from that, really when do you have chickpeas as a feature ingredient of a meal? I keep dried chickpeas in my collection of mason jar beans and dried goods ingredients, but I rarely use them. Sometimes I’ll make hummus, or toss them in with some white beans or as part of a multi-bean chili. My black beans come and go, refilling the quart sized jar every other month or so, and the kidney and white beans go almost as quickly. But those poor wrinkly chickpeas just sit there. So in an effort to highlight this special ingredient (and avoid a trip to the store for different ingredients, I embarked on a dish to make chickpeas shine.

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BBQ Brisket Crockpot Style

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BBQBrisket

What better way to follow-up a healthy, delicious crispy baked chicken recipe than some barbecue brisket?! I figure if you eat healthy one day, you can bank those extra calories to splurge on something rich and savory the next day, right? I don’t know, the logic works for me. In reality, this recipe is really an oxymoron. You can’t exactly have some good old BBQ without the barbecue, can you. And a slow cooker isn’t even close. But again, we’re in Brooklyn, so we do things a bit differently. Like having a Labor Day BBQ inside with a grillpan. Just go with it.

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