Crock Pot Meals--Throw in and Forget

I love to use the crockpot. Oh, how I love it. Put the food in, turn it on, and at 6:00 dinner is ready!

Let’s start with some of my all time favorite stand-bys. Both of these dishes are good for more than one meal, and I made meal suggestions after each recipe.

Salsa Chicken 

(My friend Donna gave me this idea at least 9 years ago. It is an absolute life saver).

2 Ingredients (you like it already, right?):
Chicken pieces -- with bones if you plan to serve it whole; boneless/skinless if you are going to shred it.

Salsa -- For large batches I use Pace from Costco--cheap! Use your favorite, or make it yourself (recipe coming), and experiment, because changing the salsa changes the flavor.

Cover the bottom of the crockpot with a little salsa to keep the bottom of the chicken from drying out.
Add chicken--it’s okay to really fill the crockpot on this one.

Pour salsa over chicken--about 2 cups of salsa per 5 chicken breasts; enough salsa to be able to see it but the chicken does not have to float in it. Turn crockpot on high, cook 6-8 hours.

Meals:
First Night:
-Serve it as a whole piece of chicken with spanish rice, green beans, and orange slices.
or -Serve it whole with tortillas, homemade beans, rice and guacamole--the authentic way.

After Dinner transfer remaining meat to a cutting board and shred it with 2 forks. Store it in the frige with some of the juice from the crockpot.

Second Night:
-Shred it and use in: tacos, burritos, quesadillas, or casseroles.

I always make a crock pot full of this, because once it’s shredded it freezes well. When we go camping, I take a ziplock of shredded salsa chicken, tortillas and a batch of homemade beans, and we have dinner the first night.

BBQ Country Style Ribs

Again, 2 Ingredients (I know, you love me):

Country Style Pork Ribs. They go on sale often. This does not work for all kinds of ribs; fortunately these are the cheapest kind.

~The best ones are trimmed with no bones (At Costco, about $1.69 per pound).

~Untrimmed and/or with bones is fine, but cut off as much fat as you can before you start cooking them.

BBQ Sauce. Nothing fancy, even homemade is fine.

~If you watch sales, you can find a bottle for under $1.00.

~Different flavors change the taste. We prefer a honey BBQ, and we buy the really cheap stuff for this.

1. Pile up the Country Style Pork Ribs in the crockpot; it's okay to put a lot of meat in.
2. Squeeze in a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce--different sauces add different flavor, but they all work.  I like to really cover the meat well, but it doesn't always take a whole bottle.
3. Turn crockpot on high, and cook 6-8 hours, or low and cook 10-12 hours. The longer you cook these, the more tender they will be.

Meals:
First Night:
-

Whole ribs, with some sauce from the crockpot or plain BBQ sauce spooned over them, with mashed potatoes and corn or salad--mmmm good.

After Dinner, transfer remaining meat to a cutting board, and shred with 2 forks. Store in the frige with some of the remaining sauce from the crockpot to keep it juicy.

Lunch the Next Day:
-Shredded meat, heated up with some BBQ sauce to make them saucy, with grilled or carmelized onions and melted jack cheese on your favorite roll, toasted.

A 3rd day:
-Shredded and saucy over potatoes or rice, with broccoli on the side.