Crockpot Pulled Pork

I've never liked pork. I've always been more of a chicken breast sorta gal. But when I found pork for $1/lb. a few weeks ago, half the price I pay for chicken breasts and cheaper than ground beef, too, I decided to give it a try. (Gulp.)

In my very first crockpot post last fall, I asked for some tried and true crockpot recipes. Jennie left this one for Easy Pulled Pork:

* 3lb pork butt
* 1 cup brewed coffee (leftover from the morning pot... whatever) - (if you don't ever have coffee in your house, then use a cup of rootbeer)
* 16oz can beef broth
* BBQ sauce

Season the pork with some salt and pepper. Place in the crock pot with the coffee and broth. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours. The biggest effort involved in this meal is pulling the pork apart after it's finished cooking. After doing so, mix with your favorite BBQ sauce and serve on hamburger buns.

It was SO good! I don't like coffee, so I used the root beer. I didn't know how much to season it with the salt and pepper, so I might have overdone it there just a bit (but it was still good!). It honestly was VERY easy. By the end of the day, it was very tender and practically fell apart, so there wasn't even that much effort involved in shredding it. I actually thought it tasted good plain, so I only mixed BBQ sauce into half of it. The whole family liked it both plain AND with the BBQ sauce. My kids don't eat buns, so we just ate it with forks and mashed potatoes on the side. Thanks, Jennie, for making pork a meat my family will eat!

Do you have an easy crockpot recipe? I'd love to try it if you're willing to share!

Yogurt Update

Has anyone been brave enough to try making yogurt? Well, just in case any of you muster up the courage, I thought I would let you know that I've been playing with my recipe a little bit. I had been stirring in some dry milk and a packet of Knox gelatin to help it thicken, but wondered if it would work without it. So all it has is:

• Milk
  
• Plain Yogurt

That's it! I think it's creamier without the gelatin. I also tried using more than 1/2 a gallon of milk, to see if I could make a bigger batch at a time (about 3/4 of a gallon fit in my crockpot), and I only let it sit for 9 hours. It still thickened just fine!

Here's the steps again, just in case you want to try it:

• Heat 1/2 gallon of milk on the stove for about 10 minutes, stirring almost constantly so it doesn't scald. You want it to reach 190 degrees, or just about boiling.
  
• Put the pot of milk into the sink filled with cool water and let cool for about 10 minutes. The temperature needs to get down to 105 degrees so it won't kill the yogurt you mix in.
• Mix in 1/2 cup of plain yogurt (this is your starter).
  
• Put in a warmed, UNPLUGGED crockpot, (or just leave it in your covered pot). Wrap it in thick towels and blankets to keep it warm and let it sit for 8 hours.

I've made it with 2% and 1% milk. I don't know if skim would thicken well or not. I also don't know about soy or lactose-free milk. If any of you have tried any of those, please let me know.
I really want to know if anyone's been brave enough to give this a shot. Please leave a comment! I've made it several times, and M, H, and I eat it frequently and no one has gotten sick. I've even given small amounts to baby F and she's been fine, too. We just mix in a couple tablespoons of honey to sweeten it up (no honey for the baby, though). You can also mix in fruit, jelly, or even flavored applesauce. You might still want a little honey for sweetener, so play around with it. Try it! You might like it!

Do you want more crockpot recipes? Check out the Crockpot Carnival!

More Yogurt!

Mmmm, we've really been enjoying my crockpot yogurt! Since no one got sick from the last batch (I wasn't worried, but some may be mildly concerned, or "wigged out", as the case may be!), I decided to make some more and tweak a few things in the recipe. This time I didn't stir in any dry milk (I forgot!), I used half 1% and half 2% milk, and I only let it sit for 13 hours. It still worked great! Because I was curious, here's some numbers:

32 oz Dannon plain yogurt = $2.77 (which yields 8 starters of 4 oz each = .35 per batch)
1 gallon of milk = $2.50 (which yields 2 batches of yogurt = $1.25 per batch)
1 batch equals 68 oz of yogurt = $1.75 (including estimated energy?), or .02 per oz!
The 32 oz Dannon plain = .08 per oz
Even when I get a 4 pk of Activia for .55 after doubled coupon, that is still .03 per oz.

So besides being yummy, it's even cost-efficient! And my yogurt only contains milk, yogurt cultures, and whatever I decide to add (like honey or fruit). No high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, or artificial colorings. And honestly, it's not hard. 10 minutes to boil, 10 minutes to cool, and then mix and let sit. I have a new favorite hobby! ;-)

Crockpot Yogurt!

Yes, it's true! I made yogurt in my crockpot! I'm so excited! So are the girls. Ted's a little grossed out. He wouldn't even look at it this morning. I think the thought of letting warm milk sit out on the counter overnight did him in. He's missing out!

On our vacation we spent time at my parents' house. My mom has been making yogurt in her yogurt maker and had to slow down her consumption because she was eating up to 3 a day. I guess that's not good for your waistline. I truly didn't understand why she would eat 3 yogurts a day. I mean, I like yogurt, but I don't feel like I need to eat it all the time. What was the big deal?

Then we got there and she shared some of her yogurt with us. Ted and G liked it okay, but prefer the store-bought stuff, but H, M and I just LOVED Grammie's yogurt. We found ourselves sheepishly wanting 2-3 yogurts a day. Yup, it was that good.

My mom saw how much we were enjoying her yogurt (she had to make several batches!), so, being the loving mother she is, she offered to send her yogurt maker home with me. I appreciated her generosity, but declined, saying that I didn't want another appliance around (plus it wouldn't make NEARLY enough for our family! I'd have to be running it constantly!). Besides, I told her, The Crockpot Lady had made yogurt in her crockpot, and since I'm trying to use mine more, I thought I'd try it when we got home. (now that I knew what the big deal was about the homemade yogurt!)

After we got home, it was a flurry of holidays, and I finally got around to trying the recipe over the weekend. It didn't work. I was SO disappointed because I had my face fixed for some homemade yogurt. And I was super bummed that I had to dump 1/2 a gallon of milk down the drain. But I told myself that the experiment only cost about $1.30, and gave myself permission to try one more time.

I went back to the blog and, after looking over all the comments, decided to change a few things and try again.

This time it worked! And it is SO yummy! It tastes just like my mom's. . . mmmm! Here's what I did:

• Pour 1/2 gallon of 2% milk into a pot on the stove. Add 1/2 cup dry milk. Stir occasionally until temperature reaches 190 degrees (to kill the bad bacteria in the milk since it'll be sitting out overnight, warm). This took probably 10 minutes.
  
• Put the pot in a sink of warm water, then cooler water to bring the milk temp down to 105 degrees (so you don't kill the good bacteria in the yogurt). This took about 10 minutes.
• While that's cooling, plug in your crockpot on low. In a bowl, mix one packet of Knox unflavored gelatin into 1/2 cup plain yogurt (this is your starter, with the good bacteria).
• When the milk is cooled enough, pour into your crockpot, then stir in yogurt starter. Stir well and then cover and UNPLUG your crockpot. Wrap it in a beach towel and cover with a small blanket. I even added a warm water bottle in the layers of blankets. Tuck it in nice and cozy.
  
• Leave it alone for many hours. Some said 5, my mom's takes like 24. I REALLY wanted this to work and have time to thicken up, so I left it for 18 hours and we woke up to have YUMMY yogurt for breakfast! H, M and I like to stir in about a tablespoon of honey. G had some after I stirred in honey and some strawberry jelly. H, M and I had honey yogurt again at lunch, but G opted for store-bought strawberry. Fine--more for us! :-)
  

Here's what I think I did wrong the first time: I used 1% milk, I didn't boil it, didn't add dry milk, used vanilla yogurt, I only wrapped it in one towel, so it was probably too cold, and I only let it sit for 8 hours. I ended up with a crockpot full of warm milk with a thin gelatinous layer at the bottom. Next time I make it I will try to use 1% milk again (since that's the milk I usually buy).

If you try it, please let me know if it worked for you and how you did it!

Crock Pot Applesauce

Cameron and Linda let me borrow their crock pot cookbooks, since I am determined to give this crock pot thing a try. I used it to make some applesauce with some of the apples we picked last weekend.
I cut up a bunch of apples with my handy Apple-Peeler-Corer-Slicer from Pampered Chef. I love that thing this time of year! I put the apples in the crock pot, added a little sugar, sprinkled in some cinnamon and nutmeg, a little bit of lemon juice, and a couple cups of water. The recipe said 3-4 hours on high.

My dilemma: The apples weren't done by bedtime. I don't have one of those fancy "smart" crock pots with a timer on it, so I was lamenting that I'd probably have to set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to turn off the crock pot when Ted said, "why don't you plug it into one of those timers we have for the lamps?" I said, "you're so smart honey!" to which he replied, "you don't need a smart crock pot, you already have a smart husband!" :-) So true!

So I set the timer for a few more hours and went to bed. Of course, since I haven't left a crock pot on all night, let alone plugged into a timer, I was still nervous about it. I didn't want to wake up to burnt apple mess, so I still checked on it in the middle of the night (F was up to eat anyway . . . such is life).

The apples were done by morning, but I knew the applesauce was too chunky for my kids to want to eat it, so I quickly ran it through the blender and it turned out perfectly! The girls loved warm, homemade applesauce with their breakfast.

What a Crock Pot!

Confession: I have a crock pot in my basement that I have never used. GASP!

I know, some of you love your crock pots and use them on a regular basis. I've always been a "dinner at the last minute" type of gal. Right about 4:00 or 4:30 each day, I say, "oh, I guess I'd better think about what to make for dinner! What can I throw together quickly?" Needless to say, this coincides with kids getting up from nap, hungry, sometimes crabby, and always wanting my attention. Throw in there a baby who wants to eat right now and what you have is a recipe for disaster, not dinner!

I've decided to bite the bullet and dig out the crock pot. The scenario listed above is one of the reasons, but the other reason I decided to try it is from an energy standpoint. After talking to my brother who is single about all the things he cooks in his toaster oven, I started to think about how much less energy he uses in using the toaster oven instead of heating up an oven and then having to pay to cool the house in the summer. So I started to think about buying a toaster oven. However, in an attempt to be frugal and wise with our finances, I decided I should start using things I already have instead of buying more things. :-)

So this morning I went to the basement and found the crock pot, washed it out and then had to find a recipe to make. I went to my favorite recipe site, Allrecipes.com, and typed in that I wanted a recipe with ground beef as an ingredient with "crock pot" as a keyword. I surfed through the ones that came up. Meatballs, meatloaf, and stew aren't favorites in our family, so I skipped those. I wanted a main dish for dinner, so I skipped the dip and baked beans recipes, too. I already have easy and fairly quick recipes for chili, lasagna, and black bean soup, so I wanted to try something different. I decided to try a Tamale Casserole, substituting black beans for black olives. I had all the ingredients, it looked easy, and I thought there was a chance my kids would eat it. It's cooking right now...I'm skeptical but we'll see how it turns out!

So here's where you come in: Do you have a slow cooker recipe that your family loves? I'd really like to give this crock pot thing a try, but I need some good recipes to get me going. Please leave a comment at the end of this post if you have a good recipe for me to try!