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Slow Cooker Butter Chicken Sliders

By Sarah on August 6, 2015 in Chicken night, Freezer friendly, Main Dish, Slow Cooker

This post was approved by Kiwi. I wouldn’t dare share an Indian recipe without his buy-in.

When I first mentioned “butter chicken,” he hesitated. And at “sliders,” he raised his eyebrows, as if to say—“could you be any whiter, my love?”

But who can resist a pile of slow-cooked shredded chicken piled high on a soft slider bun? Not Kiwi, certainly. And once he got over the whiteness of it all, he was on board and full of ideas: “oh, it would be great with a little mango chutney and some sliced red onions….oh and cilantro…definitely cilantro”. Continue Reading →

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Pulled Pork Tacos with Quick-Pickled Red Onions and all the Fixin’s

By Sarah on April 30, 2015 in Main Dish, Meat night, Slow Cooker

We are still very much in the midst of a taco mania here in Toronto, which you won’t find me complaining about. For every up and coming neighbourhood in the city there are several taco joints, each one promising something more awesome than the one down the street. The hispter to taqueria ratio is heading for 1:1, and I LOVE it.

What’s not to love about tacos? The fresh flavours, the heat, the intersection of creamy and crunchy, and the share-ability (Kiwi and I have been known to alternate bites, so that we can try as many varieties as possible). Fun, fast, cheap and flavourful. I could go on. Continue Reading →

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Healthier Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

By Sarah on January 29, 2015 in Freezer friendly, Main Dish, Meat night, Slow Cooker

I have so much to say about slow cookers that I don’t know where to start.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with mine. I love the idea of it: throwing a bunch of healthy ingredients into a pot, turning it on, leaving it all day, and coming home to a nourishing stew, soup or chili. What’s not to love about that? But my attempts to execute on this idea have been met with mixed success. Mostly failure, actually.

I expect slow cookering would be relatively foolproof if I used commercial sauces and soups—powdered onion soup mix, canned cream of mushroom, or jarred barbecue sauce, for example. This is what slow cookers (or crock pots) were invented for back in the convenience-food-crazed 1970s.

But slow cooking with real food—vegetables, stocks, fresh herbs, and stuff like that—doesn’t work quite as well. You often end up, in my experience, with a dinner that is bland, soupy and cat-foodish in appearance. I once made a promising slow cooker peanut-butter chicken stew recipe that tasted and looked so terrible it went straight into the trash.

I considered giving up on the slow cooker all together, but judging by the amount of requests I get for “slow cooker recipes, puh-lease!!!!” I figured it would be something like shooting my busy-parent-cooking-blog in the foot. So I persevered. And I’m finally ready to unveil my first (hard won) Kiwi & Bean approved slow cooker recipe. Continue Reading →

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