4 Easy Crock Pot Recipes for a Busy Day

Home cooked meals are delicious and an excellent way to ensure that a family follows a healthy diet. However, in the hectic pace of keeping up with other responsibilities such as school and work, many people find it difficult to find the time to put together a healthy meal every night. Fortunately, there is an easy option for cooking a healthy meal with very little effort. Crock pot meals are an ideal way to easily prepare a meal that tastes as if hours of preparation have gone into developing such a full flavor. The following four crock pot recipes require only a few simple ingredients and can offer a delicious option for cooking on a busy day.

Slow Cooker Lasagna

Lasagna is a delicious and filling meal, yet the traditional recipe usually requires pre-cooking noodles, preparing a sauce and cooking for over an hour in the oven. In the slow cooker, the process can be shortened by using jarred or canned spaghetti sauce and omitting boiling the noodles. For this recipe, uncooked noodles should be layered with a mixture of ricotta and parmesan cheese. Browned hamburger meat can be added to taste, and then the whole lasagna should be topped with spaghetti sauce. The lasagna will then need to cook on medium-high for three to four hours for a delicious meal.

Chicken Tacos

When cooked in the slow cooker, chicken and other meats take on a deeper flavor of added seasonings and spices. In order to make chicken tacos, simply cover two to three chicken breasts with salsa and let it simmer until the chicken is no longer pink. On medium heat, this will usually take three to four hours. Once the chicken has cooked, it can be shredded, and then placed in tortillas with a person’s favorite toppings.

Beef Stew

Beef stew is another quick meal that can be tailored to fit the individual tastes of a family. For this recipe, a pound of stew meat should be combined with potatoes, carrots, onions and other vegetables, and then covered with water. If seasoning is preferred it can be added as well. Once the stew has been prepared, then it should cook for approximately three to four hours on high heat until the meat has been cooked through and the vegetables are soft.

Chicken and Dumplings

Another easy meal to make in the slow cooker is chicken and dumplings. For this recipe, four chicken breasts should be placed in the crock pot along with two tablespoons of butter and two cans of condensed chicken soup. Onions and garlic can also be added to taste. Then, this should cook for five to six hours on high heat. To make the dumplings, torn pieces of refrigerator biscuit dough should be added to the pot approximately thirty minutes before the food has finished cooking.

This post was written by ezCater.com. For more recipe ideas and easy meal suggestions, or to turn to the pro’s for help and order New Haven catering or any of the other regions served by ezCater, visit ezCater.com.