If you’re looking for some quick meal ideas, one of my top tips is to let your Crock-Pot do the work for you. That way, you can get that cooked-all-day quality without actually cooking all day.
I’ve put together a list of seven easy family slow cooker meals that can help you get a good, homemade meal on the table without too much fuss.
1. Batch Cooked Crock-Pot Taco Meat
With just 20 minutes of prep time, you can have enough of this tasty meat to form the basis of three nights of dinner – talk about being efficient! This ridiculously simple recipe can be used for the meals you might expect, like tacos, nachos and enchiladas, along with stuffed sweet potatoes, wraps, Mexican-style lasagne and sliders. The only limit is your creativity!
2. Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken Tacos
If minced meat doesn’t appeal, here’s a chicken-based recipe that’s really similar to my Crock-Pot taco meat. It’s a dump-and-go recipe that can be used for all the same things mentioned above, whether you make mouth-watering chicken nachos or burritos or you choose to use it as a tasty wrap filling or to make a chicken taco salad. Easy slow cooker recipes don’t get much more delicious than this!
3. Slow Cooker Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken
This easy and flavourful meal is very budget-friendly and only requires a few ingredients. Most of the work involved here – if we can even call it “work” – is thickening up the sauce at the end with a cornstarch slurry. It has that salty-sweet combo that appeals to most kids, so it’s a real crowd pleaser. Serve with rice and steamed broccoli for a balanced meal.
4. Quickest Ever Crock-Pot Drumsticks
Don’t you hate it when you make a recipe with something like “quick” or “10-minute” in the title, only to find you need closer to an hour to make it well? This isn’t one of those recipes. There are just three steps, and the first one is literally throwing drumsticks into your slow cooker, with steps 2 and 3 being sprinkling herbs and lemon and turning the slow cooker on. It really doesn’t get any easier than that. This is one of those meal ideas you’ll turn to again and again.
5. Super Easy Skinny Veggie Crockpot Lasagna
On the rare occasions that I make lasagna, I quickly remember why I haven’t made it in so long – it’s a real labour of love (that’s my nice way of saying it’s a huge pain to make). But I really do enjoy eating it, and so do my kids, which is why this recipe is such a good one. You get all the goodness of a ricotta-style lasagna with a bunch of healthy vegetables – with pretty much none of the work.
6. Deconstructed cabbage rolls
Here’s another one of my favourite meal ideas for making a classic dish quicker. If you love cabbage rolls but you hate all the work involved, I’ve got the recipe for you! This comfort crockpot recipe is awesome with mashed potatoes or warmed naan.
7. Creamy garlic-lemon chicken
This is a filling and tasty dish that’s perfect when you’re craving something creamy. You just have to stir some ingredients together, pour them over chicken breasts and cook in the Crock-Pot until tender. Then, you make a quick stovetop sauce just before serving that brings this dish to the next level. Serve with rice or couscous and a side of steamed spinach or broccoli.
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