Recipe Wednesday: Slow Cooker Pineapple Chicken with Rice

We recently had to switch to a dairy free diet in our house because the newest member of our family appears to have a sensitivity to it.  Really, I am the only one who can no longer eat any dairy because of breastfedding; PGS and my husband still can eat dairy. So a lot of times, I make the meal dairy free and take out my portion and add the cheese when it's a recipe that calls for cheese. Changing our menu plans to dairy free has required some creativity and forced trying out some new recipes. This slow cooker recipe is a recipe that I found a while ago and we've had a couple of times before. The last time that I made pineapple chicken, I added broccoli to the Crock-Pot and hoped for the best. Spoiler alert: it was a good decision. 

SLOW COOKER PINEAPPLE CHICKEN with RICE

Ingredients

2-3 chicken breasts

1 can of pineapple in juice (I used tidbits)

diced onion (approximately 1 medium)

¹/₂ cup chicken stock (chicken broth works, too)

2 Tbs soy sauce

¹/₂ cup uncooked rice

1 cup water

Directions

1. Layer onion (and any other veggies you add), chicken breast and pineapple. Make sure to add all the pineapple juice!

2. Add 2 Tbs of soy sauce and ¹/₂ cup chicken stock.

3. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours, or HIGH for 4-5 hours. Internal temperature of chicken should be at least 165°F.

4. About 30 minutes before the chicken is done, cook your rice.

5. [Optional] Shred the chicken and mix up.

6. Serve over the rice.

When I make this, I use frozen onion, frozen broccoli, and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. If I have fresh chicken breasts, then I use those, but I normally have frozen chicken breasts. I don't thaw the chicken and I cook it on low for 8 hours. Possibly too long, but with all the liquid in the recipe, the chicken has never been dry when cooked this way.

Both my husband and I like this meal, but I'm not sure about my two year old. He has refused to try it each time that I've made it. If he liked chicken or pineapple normally, then I would require that he at least try one bite, but he's never liked chicken and hasn't tried pineapple before.

I forgot to snap a picture of the plated meal before the Mr. took a couple
of bites. lol

Recipe Wednesday: Slow Cooker Meatballs and Bread Bowls

We currently do not have working central air in our apartment, so I've been trying to either plan for meals on the grill, in the slow cooker or no heating necessary to avoid turning on my oven to make us dinner. Earlier this week we had a few days that it was okay to use the oven with the windows open and fans on, so I made some meatballs and mini bread bowls.

SLOW COOKER MEATBALLS AND MINI BREAD BOWLS

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef

1 egg

1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs

3 tablespoons milk

1 jar (25 oz) marinara sauce

1 can (11 oz) Pillsbury™ refrigerated crusty French loaf

Parmesan cheese, if desired

Directions

1. Spray 3-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. In large bowl: mix beef, egg, bread crumbs, milk and Parmesan. Shape into approximately 16 meatballs. Add marinara sauce and meatballs to slow cooker. Cover and cook on High heat setting 3 to 4 hours.

2. Meanwhile, heat oven to 350°F. Cut dough into four pieces. Spray underside of jumbo muffin pan. Form dough around muffin cups to make four bowls. Bake 13 to 15 minutes or until bowls are golden brown. Cool slightly. Remove bowls, and cool completely.

3. Brush baked bread bowls with butter and garlic salt or Italian herbs for an interesting flavor twist.

The fat in the beef and the cooking spray does make it a little oily
when the meatballs are finished cooking.

4. To serve, spoon 4 meatballs and sauce into each bread bowl. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, if desired.

My bread bowls weren't perfect, but they still tasted yummy!

Recipe Wednesday: Slow Cooker Cinnamon Roll French Toast

Every week, I get a bunch of recipe emails from various companies (Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, etc.) and once or twice a month, I go through and choose a few new ones to try. The last time that I went through, about two weeks ago, I saw a slow cooker recipe for cinnamon roll French toast and it just sounded like a great idea for dinner one night! Of course, I forgot to plan for a protein outside of the egg in the French toast, so it had the potential to be a too light dinner, but nobody complained about being hungry before bed a few hours later, so my accidental omission didn't do too much meal damage.

I modified the ingredients and directions to show how we made it.

SLOW COOKER CINNAMON ROLL FRENCH TOAST

Ingredients

¹/₄ cup butter, melted

1 can (12.4 oz each) Pillsbury® refrigerated cinnamon rolls with icing

3 eggs

¹/₄ cup whipping cream

¹/₂ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¹/₂ teaspoon vanilla

Real maple syrup - I did not measure the syrup, I just eyeballed it

Directions

1. Using coconut oil, grease the insides of crock. Pour melted butter into slow cooker.

2. Separate can of dough into 8 rolls; set icing aside. Cut each roll into 8 pieces; place pieces over butter in slow cooker.

3. In medium bowl, beat eggs. Add whipping cream, cinnamon and vanilla; beat until well blended. Gently pour mixture over roll pieces. Drizzle with the syrup.

4. Cover; cook on Low heat setting 2 hours 30 minutes (or until set and temperature in center is 160°F).

5. Drizzle with reserved icing and a little more syrup.

PGS unwrapping the butter to melt it

Cutting into 8 pieces and placing in crock
(I did the cutting; PGS did the placing)

Mixing the eggs, cream, cinnamon, vanilla and syrup

Cook on LOW for 2.5 hours

Ready to serve!

While this was really tasty, it is pretty sugary and not that healthy, so it's not something that I'll make often, but as the occasional treat, I think it's wonderful!

I plated it with an apple cinnamon muffin because I was worried about it not being enough food. lol

Recipe Wednesday: Slow Cooker Ham

This week is an easy Slow Cooker meal: brown sugar and maple ham, sweet potato fries and a side of corn. (Feel free to substitute whichever sides you would prefer, those are just my favorites with ham.) A few months ago, one of my friends had posted on facebook that she made ham in the slow cooker for dinner and since I had yet to find a recipe that I liked, I asked how she did it. She gave me the following recipe:

SLOW COOKER HAM

Ingredients - no measurements, just eyeball it

Ham slices - the fully cooked variety

Real maple syrup  (none of that imitation stuff, it's basically HFCS and not as flavorful )

Brown sugar (I used light brown sugar because it's what I have in my cupboard)

Pineapple chunks or rings, optional

Water

Directions

1. Pour enough water into the crock to have about 1" water in the crock.

2. Layer ham slice, maple syrup and brown sugar and repeat until all ham slices are in the crock.

3. Cook on low for a few hours. Check after about 90 minutes to make sure you haven't over cooked since the goal is to simply heat the ham through. It's already fully cooked.

Ham, real maple syrup, brown sugar

Layered ingredients in the crock

Cook on Low

Ham and fries (I snapped the picture and forgot to put the corn there first)

I followed the directions on the bag for the sweet potato fries (sorry, I did not make them from scratch; not this time). For the corn, I dump some frozen corn into the smallest saucepan I have, add a little water, a tablespoon of butter and sprinkle some freshly ground pepper on it. I then cover it with the lid, turn the burner to low and let it cook until everything else is done or it starts to boil, whichever comes first. lol

This is the perfect, easy peasy dinner for Easter if you like to serve ham on Easter. More people you need to serve? Use a larger slow cooker! We used a 3qt slow cooker because there is only myself, hubby and PGS to feed at dinner time, but if I was feeding more people, I would use our 6qt slow cooker and buy more ham slices and use two cans of pineapple.

Tell me, what is you family doing for Easter this coming Sunday? Do you celebrate Easter? We don't usually do anything special, but this year, we are doing an egg hunt and an Easter basket for PGS. This is the first year that we're doing those things. The eggs are filled with chalk from Chalk It Up Kids and his basket has a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book (he picked it out) and Godiva chocolate (his daddy insisted we continue his family traditions of gifting Godiva for big days).