The time is recipe:30!
As many of my friends may know, I have been an avid recipe collector for a very long time.
When I was young it was limited to my mom’s old Betty Crocker cookbook.
In college they were kept written on index cards stored inside a piece of square Tupperware.
After graduation and I REALLY started collecting, I moved to 3-ring binders. They aren’t pretty, and maybe one day I’ll make them so, but for now they are at least functional!
A few years ago, I lived in Raleigh and worked the “flex shift”: 12:30 pm – 9:00 pm. I am not a person who likes to be at work into the night. I’d much rather go in early and still have part of my afternoon left to get other things done. I will say though that these hours FULLY allowed a person to miss allllllllll that awful Raleigh traffic! And let me tell you, this was a SUPER perk in a capital city.
However, these hours really took away my time to make dinner at home. So I lovingly turned to my crockpot!! Putting meals in the slow cooker around 10 am or so was the perfect cook time to be ready around a normal suppertime, aka when Sammy was home and ready to eat. The other good thing about slow cooker meals is that you can make huge batches and take pre-portioned servings to work for lunch/dinner. Or the leftovers could be frozen and saved for another time.
I built up a huge arsenal of AWESOME crockpot recipes during my almost three years there, and I was asked many times for recipes by coworkers who had the same odd hours as I did. They’d see me eating on my leftovers, or we’d get into a discussion about how tough it was to make time to cook with our hours or with children. I remember plopping down my notebooks on one friend’s desk and saying “have at it!”
Being from the south and knowing that my Granddaddy probably has a nice batch of Brunswick Stew in his freezer at almost all times, I was elated to find this recipe. I loooooove Brunswick stew! I went back to my roots and found this on the Betty Crocker site. I made a few adjustments/additions since I like my soups and stews as chock full of vegetables as I can get them. It’s my absolute go-to for wanting to have a large amount of food to eat off of throughout the week.
Just a bunch of stuff thrown together that tastes like heaven at the end of the day! I will mention that the recipe is not clear on how much liquid to add. I usually add about a 32 oz. carton of chicken broth, but the degree of liquid in stews is another personal preference that can be left up to the cook! Use as much broth or water as you need to bring the stew to your desired consistency.
I would encourage anyone to give this a try!
Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. chicken bouillon granules
- 1-1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
- 1/8 tsp. pepper
- 4 Chicken breasts
- 4 large red potatoes chopped into 1" pieces
- 1 cup carrots sliced
- 1/2 cup Onion chopped
- 1 can Rotel tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
- 1/3 cup. BBQ sauce
- 1 cup water or broth plus more for desired consistency
- 1 9 oz. box edamame or lima beans
- 1 9 oz. box frozen corn
- 1 cup celery or zucchini chopped
- 1 green bell pepper chopped
- Salt and pepper
- Parmesan cheese for topping
Instructions
- In large Ziploc bag, mix flour, bouillon, poultry seasoning and pepper. Add chicken, potatoes, carrots and onion; seal bag and shake to coat. In 3.5-4 qt. slow cooker, add chicken and vegetables.
- In small bowl, mix Rotel tomatoes, Worcestershire, BBQ sauce and water. Pour over chicken and vegetables and stir gently. Cover; cook on low heat setting for 6-8 hours.
- Stir in beans, corn, celery/zucchini and green pepper into the stew. Cover and cook about 30 minutes longer or until vegetables are tender.
- With a slotted spoon, remove chicken. Cut into pieces or shred (personal preference!) and return to stew. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Enjoy!
We use ground turkey, pulled pork, chicken, corn, Limas, okra and the trinity. Plus a bottle of hot ketchup! Yum!
noms! What’s the trinity?
I have taken to saving recipes digitally, Kellie, to make sure I don’t ever lose them. I use Pinterest for recipes I want to try, and allrecipes.com has a “recipe box” where I add the tried and true ones. Both are free😃
Oh I get tons of recipes from Pinterest! It’s my favorite! Haven’t really browsed Allrecipes in a long time but I used to have a recipe box on there… wonder what my password was?
This looks good! I am a big soup/stew fan, as you know! Every couple of weeks, I make a basic vegetable soup, then throw in whatever is leftover in my fridge. This w,eek has leftover rubbed pork chops, a little meatloaf, etc. Throw in some tomatoes, Suzy-Q seasoning, whole wheat macaroni, and dinner is on! You should try to get Gama’s squash recipe–soooo good.