Skaggs - Real food slow cooker suppers: easy, family-friendly recipes from scratch

Samantha Skaggs

founder of the blog FiveHeartHome.com

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TO JASON. GRANT. REID AND ANNIE

I love you all so much, and Im thankful for you every day.

Yall are my world.

Several years backas a sleep-deprived, stay-at-home mama of three kiddos under the age of fiveI had this crazy idea to start a food blog. I loved cooking, I loved photography, I loved writing and I was yearning for a creative outlet to prove to myself that my tired, fuzzy, baby-saturated brain could still function well enough to form a coherent written sentence. But what to call this new venture? Well, it hit me while folding socks in the laundry room one day, inspired by the mountain of dirty clothes created by five beloved family members.

From the beginning, I had no interest in Five Heart Home representing anything that I wasnt. As much as I enjoyed creating and cooking for my family, I was a busy mom with needy young children, and I didnt have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. On the other hand, I was intent on feeding my kids wholesome, homemade food made from real ingredients. So thats exactly how my blog started, and thats how it remains todayquick and easy, family-friendly, real-food recipes.

With babies, toddlers and now older kids, the slow cooker has always been a central figure in my life when it comes to consistently getting dinner on the table. I appreciate that I can choose a recipe that fits my schedulewhether that means prepping a meal the night before, first thing in the morning or midway through the dayso that theres not much left to do come dinnertime. However, Ive always felt a little frustrated that so many slow cooker recipes are rife with processed ingredients, from condensed soups to dried seasoning packets.

And so, when I found myself presented with the amazing opportunity to create an entire cookbook of from-scratch slow cooker recipes using real, unprocessed ingredients, I jumped at the chance. Its exactly the kind of cookbook that I myself have always wanted to cook from, with a wide variety of straightforward, creative, flavorful recipes that dont all end up tasting like the same thing, as slow cooker recipes often do.

Working on Real Food Slow Cooker Suppers has been a true labor of love, and my greatest wish is that it is deemed helpful by all of you who use it. I hope that these recipes make your taste buds happy and your life easier. I hope that this cookbook empowers you and your family to eat healthier, inspires you to try new things and brings your loved ones round the dinner table together.

So dive in and meet me by the slow cooker! And any time youre on the hunt for even more easy, yummy, real-food recipes, Id be thrilled to have you stop by and say hi over at FiveHeartHome.com.

MODERN-DAY SLOW COOKERS, REAL-FOOD INGREDIENTS AND GETTING TO KNOW YOUR SLOW COOKER

The slow cooker is a magical kitchen appliance. It allows you to prepare a meal ahead of time, when you actually have time, and then conveniently walk away until dinnertime. It provides a low, slow cooking environment thats perfect for turning out tender ingredients that are infused with flavor. And with the right recipes, its possible to get fabulous flavor out of a slow cookerwhich is where this cookbook comes in (hint, hint)!

Its important to note that slow cooker use has evolved over the years, however. Slow cooker suppers of the past meant tossing some things into the slow cooker in the morningusually, processed ingredients like canned condensed soups and seasoning packetsand then letting em cook all day long.

But two things have changed. For food safety reasons, newer model slow cookers are designed to cook hotter than they used to. This means that if you follow an old slow cooker recipe using a new slow cooker, your food is likely going to overcook. It also means that the era of cooking just about any type of slow cooker recipe for eight to ten hours is over (or at least its dwindling, as older model slow cookers gradually go kaput).

The other factor that has changed is the modern-day cook. As people become more in tune with the foods theyre eating and what theyre feeding their families, the stereotypically processed slow cooker ingredients of the past are making way for fresh, real-food ingredients. And while that is terrific news on the health front, it also means a small loss as far as convenience. After all, plopping a can of condensed soup into the slow cooker was as simple as opening up a can. Making your own sauce to replace that soup takes several ingredients and at least a few minutes. But lucky for us, the trade-off is well worth a healthier, fresher, better tasting meal, and real-food slow cooker suppers can still be relatively quick and easy to make.

All of the recipes in this cookbook were tested in and created for a modern (i.e., hotter running), large, oval, 6- to 7-quart (5- to 6-L) slow cooker. While there is a bit of wiggle room as far as size for many of the recipes, certain recipes must be made in a large, oval slow cooker or they literally wont work (primarily because the ingredients wont fit). Those recipes, such as , will indicate in the directions that the slow cooker should be large and oval-shaped.

Given the wide range of slow cookers in use these daysfrom older models to newer onesI could pretty much tell yall to cook a given recipe anywhere from two to eight hours, and for people using different slow cookers, the extremes of that time range would be accurate! But since thats too broad of a cooking time span for a given recipe, know this: the recipes in this cookbook give an average cooking time range for a modern-day slow cooker. If you have an older, cooler running slow cooker, its very likely that you will have to cook almost all of the recipes in this cookbook for longer than the suggested time in order to achieve tender, cooked-through ingredients. And as long as youre aware of that and prepared for the extra cooking time, thats okay!

If you have a newer slow cooker that cooks more quickly, you should know that the entire time range suggested in a recipe still may not apply to you. In other words, if a recipe says to cook chicken for four to six hours, that doesnt mean that your chicken in your slow cooker will necessarily turn out perfect at four hours as well as five hours and six hours. At four hours, your chicken might be underdone and at six hours it might be dried out, so five hours would be your optimal cooking time in