Rigatoni and Sausage

Some of you might be wondering why I'm posting so much recently and it's because although I've been trying to update every other week, I got a bit behind when I was finishing up my dissertation prospectus and so I'm trying to make up for those missed posts.  But by June I should be back on the every other week pattern.

Now, one of the things that you can do with the crock pot that I haven't done nearly enough is to make casseroles and pastas.  I did make the mac and cheese that I posted about back in 2010, but I haven't done much else with pasta since.  Of course, since I now have the Italian Slow Cooker cookbook, there are many more pasta dishes in there that I'll have to try.  But almost every non-specialized crock pot cookbook that I have has a recipe for some sort of pasta casserole. At the beginning of last July, I tried one of these recipes from the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook: Rigatoni and Sausage.

The best thing about this recipe is that there are only four ingredients so it's perfect for the grad student on a budget.  It calls for Italian turkey sausage, a jar of pasta sauce, rigatoni, and "freshly grated or shredded" Parmesan cheese.  And, for the latter, I normally have one of those store-brand shakers of Parmesan cheese in the fridge so I just used that.  Would it have been nicer with freshly shredded cheese?  Probably.  But if you're on your graduate-student-stipend budget, you've got to cut some corners (in terms of both time and money)  when necessary.

For this recipe, coat the crock pot with nonstick cooking spray first.  Then, and this was possibly the step that took the longest, you have to take the sausage out of the casings and crumble it up.  Now I couldn't find Italian-style turkey sausage at my local grocery store, so I used Italian-style pork sausage instead.  The sausage gets browned on the stove and while that is going on, you pour the pasta sauce, plus one extra jar full of water into the crock pot.  Add pasta and sausage, then stir.  The image below shows what it looked like right before I turned it on to cook.

This recipe cooks only for three and a half to four hours on low, but you have to be around to stir it once half way through (to make sure that all the pasta gets cooked), so it's not the best recipe to make on a day when you have to be out of the house all day.  It's definitely made for the weekend or a work-from-home day.  This is especially true because this is one of the only recipes I've seen that comes with a "do not overcook" warning: "Do not cook more than 4 hours because the sides will dry out and burn."

The dish is served sprinkled with the Parmesan cheese.  As you can see from the image below, it's not a casserole, just a way to cook pasta in the crock pot and to be completely honest, it might be just as easy to do this one on the stove.  However, the description of the recipe reports that the chef that invented it said that "the pasta and sauce cook up slightly dry as a casserole in the cooker," so you do get a different texture, at least, in making it with the crock pot.

This dish was amazing and it's so easy to make so it's one that I'd definitely recommend to the busy grad student.  The recipe says that it serves six and let me tell you, those six servings went really fast in our house.  It was so good that I think both my husband and I went up for seconds and I made a point of packing it for my lunch the next day.  As you can see in the picture below, garnishing the dish with fresh basil gives it a great added touch.

This recipe isn't too unhealthy for a pasta dish if you keep yourself to one serving unlike how we ate it.  It's about 557 calories per serving (so, yikes, the two servings made it over 1000 calories!).  You could be really strategic about this, actually, and make a giant salad for yourself and then serve yourself even smaller portions of pasta.  This recipe takes a whole box of rigatoni and the box (at least according to Barilla) has eight servings in it.  It you drag this recipe out into eight servings it's a not that different but slightly more manageable 424 calories per serving.  Of course, if I had been able to find the turkey sausage, it would have been 500 calories per serving for six servings and only 381 calories per serving for eight servings -- much better. In terms of cost, this recipe is perfect for the grad student budget because if you normally have Parmesan cheese on hand, it only costs about $1.50 per serving!  If you had to get the cheese too I'd calculate it at about $2.00 per serving, or a bit more if you get fresh Parmesan and shred it yourself.

Barbecued Pulled Pork Sandwiches

So, I've taken an unintentional hiatus from blogging while I finished up my dissertation prospectus.  But, this past week I successfully defended my prospectus so I feel (probably wrongly) that my life can calm down a little bit because I don't have any major looming deadlines.

Being at school in Saint Louis, I've come to especially appreciate barbecue. My husband and I try to go hiking every weekend and then check out a new barbecue joint near where we hike. One of my favorite things to get at Pappy's Smokehouse (as seen on Man v. Food!) is the pulled pork sandwich.

Back in June, before my husband and I moved into our new apartment, I made pulled pork in the crock pot for him and my roommate.  This recipe, from the Crock Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes cookbook, is really easy to do but you have to make sure that you start it early enough because it takes a long time to cook.

The first step is simple: placing a pork shoulder roast into the crock pot and cooking it on low for 10-12 hours (if you're short on time, you could do it on high and cut the time in half).  The first image posted above is of the roast after it was finished cooking.  I forgot to take a "before" picture, but it's not that interesting because it's only a raw pork roast in a crock pot.

After the roast is done cooking, you take it out of the crock pot and dump out the fatty liquid left over from cooking.  You take the roast and remove any extra fat from the outside (though I recommend cutting as much off as you can before you cook it) and shred the entire thing using two forks -- so it looks like the pulled pork you're used to.

Add the pork back into the crock pot with chopped onion, barbecue sauce, lemon juice, and brown sugar, mixing everything together.  You can use whatever type of barbecue sauce you want.  As you can see in the image above, I picked one that was a Budweiser barbecue sauce because it looked interesting and was on sale.  Then, you turn it on again and and cook for 2 hours on low (or half that time on high).  If I recall correctly, I think I cooked the roast initially on high, then did the pulled pork mix on low.

This is what it looks like before turning it on.

And this is what it looks like after it's done (so... not all that different).

As you would expect, the pulled pork is served on hamburger buns or other similar rolls.  Additionally, as you can see from the image below, this is one of the crock pot dishes where the final dish actually looks something like the image that they have in the book so it's possible that they made the food from this image in the crock pot!

In terms of servings, this recipe says that it makes eight servings, but obviously you can get either more or less depending on how much meat you put in each sandwich.  I think we ended up getting less than eight servings, but since I can't remember completely (I know -- I really should update about things I make right after I make them so I can remember) I'm going to use their number to calculate calories and cost.  In terms of calories, this isn't bad at all for a pulled pork sandwich!  I calculated about 525 calories per sandwich, but it might actually be a little less than that because (as I've mentioned in other posts) the calories are for the weight of the meat when cooked, but I only know the weight raw.  In terms of cost, this is a great savings.  If you had to purchase everything, it would only be about $2.03 per serving.  And it actually might be a little less depending on, for example, the size of the lemon juice you buy (I could only find the price for 32 oz lemon juice, but if you were to purchase a smaller container or a lemon itself, it would be less).  We already had brown sugar and lemon juice because those are staples that I always have on hand, so I only paid about $1.56 per serving!  You'd get about a week's worth of meals on this one if you're married (unless your husband normally eats two servings, in which case it would be less) and if you're single, you'd be covered for dinners into the next week (if you can stand eating pulled pork every night for dinner, that is).

Anyway, this recipe was amazing and what impresses me most about it is how easy it is.  That was really good for me at the time because I was trying also to pack for moving and to read for my second year exams!

Honey-Mustard Pork

Be warned: this is a long post.  It's almost two posts in one, so I'd recommend taking some time to read it when you want to procrastinate.

It's been a long time since I updated, but I'm finally back and will be trying my best to update once a week from now on.  I took my exams on the very last day of October and am very happy that I can move on to my dissertation research... you know, the stuff I came here to study in the first place!  After that, we were in California for a wedding and then I presented at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in San Francisco, so was at the conference for a few days.  It was great to see some old friends from undergrad there (shout out to Steve and Andy!).  Then came, Thanksgiving--thanks so much to our friends Bodhi and Sophia for hosting us for the holiday!  Sophia made a perfect turkey (in the oven, not in a crock pot) and the meal was amazing.  To sum up, I've been very busy since I last posted!

You may also notice that I took some time to make some changes to the format of the blog--changed around the main picture that I use and the style.  Let me know what you think of the new look in the comments!  I also want to point out a couple of the new features of the blog:

1. On the right side of the web page, under my "Why Slow Cooking in Graduate School?" section, you'll find a "Follow by Email" box in which I assume you can put your email address to get updates every time I update the blog.  I honestly have no idea if it works, so if someone wants to try it out and let me know, that would be really awesome.
2. Underneath that, you'll find some new links.  The first one is to my Big Blog of Crock store, a store I created on Amazon to bring together in one place all of the books and slow cookers that I recommend on this blog to make it easier for readers to find them.  The second is to the Gourmet PhD blog of one of my close friends who is also trying to cook and eat well while doing her PhD.  As she explains in her "Who's Who" section, we "have been making mischief since we first met, many moons ago, as wayward Catholic school teachers. In the intervening years, we both became graduate students and would-be food bloggers, so it’s no surprise we’re still close friends."  The final link (unless I add more later) is to the Nutrition Action Health Letter, put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  My mother gets me and my siblings a subscription to this every year and they give you information about the latest studies on food and nutrition and make recommendations about how to eat healthier.  My favorite part, however, is the three recipes that are included in each issue.  In fact, the Chicken Tagine that I posted about in October 2010 was from one issue.
3. Finally, underneath that you'll see the top five, all time, most popular posts of my blog.  If you have a favorite post that's not appearing on the list... uh... I guess you need to click on it more.

So, those are the new features of the blog.  Check them out and let me know what you think in the comments.

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So, on to my actual post.  Since I've been away from blogging for so long, but have still been cooking with my crock pot, I have a huge backlog of posts to make.  Some are from so long ago that I've almost completely forgotten about how it went, which is unfortunate.  So, for today's post, I'll bring you the recipe that I made today: "Honey-Mustard Pork".  This is from a book that we just recently got as a gift from a friend, 101 More Things to Do With a Slow Cooker.  He also gave us 101 Things to Do With a Slow Cooker, but I just haven't used that yet.  (The author, Stephanie Ashcraft, has a whole series of the 101 Things to Do books.)

I was drawn to this particular recipe for two reasons: first, boneless pork chops were on sale at my local grocery store and, second, this recipe couldn't be any easier.  There's no chopping and the absolute minimum of prep work.  (Though I will note that this is not a complete meal by itself, so you'll have to add something to what you make in the crock pot.)  You start by greasing your crock pot.  I used some cooking spray that I have on hand to do that quickly, but obviously whatever way you normally grease things for cooking is what you should do here.  Then you dip the pork chops in flour and place them in the greased crock pot before sprinkling them with black pepper.

In a separate bowl you make the sauce that these are going to cook in.  The only ingredients are condensed chicken with rice soup, water, and mustard.  You mix these together and them pour them over the crock pot.

This is what it looked like before I turned it on.

Quick sidebar: Toward the end of September we received a wedding gift from one of my husband's rock climbing friends and his wife, the slow cooker with a timer that I've wanted for a long time!  It is awesome and has truly revolutionized how I use the slow cooker.  No longer do I have to select the day that I cook on based on when I can be home to turn the crock pot to warm!  I can make a recipe that only needs to cook for 6 hours on days when I go to the gym in the morning and am at school until the late afternoon!

If you follow the link above you'll see that this model also has a probe so you can set the slow cooker by time or by the final cooking temperature that you want the food to end up at!  Obviously, the latter setting is especially good for roasts, which I haven't made recently, but of course I'll share how it goes when I do make one!

Anyway, this is what it looked like after it cooked on low for 8 hours.

When the pork chops are done cooking, you take them out, leaving the liquid behind.  Taking them out can be difficult because the meat after slow cooking is so tender that it just falls apart.  The cookbook says then to puree the liquid in a blender to make gravy, but I used the immersion blender to get it done with less mess and fewer dishes (and with the amount of dishes this entire meal made, my husband--who washed them tonight--is probably very happy that I didn't also use the blender).  You serve the pork chop with some gravy on top.

Now, since the book recommends that you serve this dish with mashed potatoes, I decided to make mashed sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli to go with it.  And, of course, a salad--my mother should be proud how I add a salad to every single meal I post about.  Overall, this dinner was good.  Nothing super special that I would rave about, but a good, solid, and really easy meal to make.  The only complaint I have is that there is nothing in the dish that makes it "honey-mustard."  As the recipe is written, there is too little mustard to make a difference and, weirdly, the recipe doesn't specify that you have to use honey mustard, so there is nothing to make it "honey."  I used Dijon mustard because that is what we already had.  My recommendation?  If you want to make pork chops this way, add more mustard, maybe 1-2 tbsp... at least.  The gravy was good and all, but I think it would be better if it had more "kick" to it from the mustard.

Now, in this recipe makes it a little difficult to calculate the calories because the amount of flour the recipe calls for is more than gets added to the actual dish and you definitely don't use all of the gravy just putting it on top of the pork chops!  The number of servings in this dish also depends on the number of pork chops used.  The recipe actually calls for 4-5 pork chops, but I used 6 because the larger packs were the ones on sale.  So, as I made the recipe, if you go by the measurements in the cookbook, you get just over 190 calories per serving.  In actuality, I'd estimate the calories per serving (for the pork chops with gravy only) at about 175 calories.  In fact, the pork chop with the mashed sweet potatoes and broccoli is probably only about 335 calories.  Really small if you're watching your weight because you spend more time in the library than you do at the gym!  (And guys, you can be like my husband and have an extra pork chop and still only be at about 510 calories.)  Budget-wise, you can't beat this.  What's awesome about this recipe is that so many of the ingredients are things that many people will have on hand as staples: flour, pepper, and mustard.  The only two items I had to purchase were the pork chops and the condensed chicken with rice soup, a total of $6.00 for $1.00 per serving.  Of course, you do have to buy the side dishes, but the broccoli was only $1.99 and sweet potatoes at my store are about $0.99 each for the big ones (I actually had them already because we got them in the organic produce delivery we get each week, but if you had to get them, that'd be how much they are).  Overall, not bad and you'll get at least 2-3 meals out of this if you're married or cooking/eating with a roommate and a whole week's worth if you're on your own!  Though if you were going to eat these pork chops for a whole week, I'd recommend switching up your side dishes to make it interesting.  What sides would you put with honey-mustard pork chops?

Panama Pork Stew

Apologies for already being a day behind with my blog.  I meant to update last night, but was engrossed in translating A Millionaire's Dinner Party for my Latin class and it just slipped my mind.  Oh well, cenemus!

On May 27 I cooked a crock pot dinner, the Panama Pork Stew from the Crock Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes, for my roommate and one of our friends who was coming over for dinner.  I have to apologize because I completely forgot to take photos while I was assembling the meal, but you can see on the right basically what went into it.  The recipe calls for pork stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes, but I was unable to find pork stew meat at my local grocery store.  I probably could have asked the butcher to cut some for me, but as a graduate student, time is precious and I did not want to wait, so I just got some boneless pork chops and cut it into the appropriate size myself.  (Plus, why pay someone else to cut it when I can do it myself?)

The other items in the stew are sweet potatoes, frozen corn, frozen green beans, onion, and canned diced tomatoes.  I always wonder a bit about some of these stew recipes because growing up, when my mother made stew, there was always a decent amount of broth (which could be soaked up with a piece of bread) and many of these recipes call for very little liquid.  This one only has the liquid from the undrained, canned tomatoes and 1/4 cup of water, plus any tiny bit of liquid that melts off the frozen corn and green beans.  The recipe says to combine the tomatoes, water, and spices (chili powder, salt, and ground coriander) in a bowl and then pour it over the pork which has been placed on top of the vegetables.  In my rush in the morning to get this done before heading to school, I didn't read the directions ahead and so just dumped all those things in the crock pot on top.  Now, in my defense, many crock pot stew recipes ask you to just put all the ingredients in and mix them together, so it was only reasonable that I would have expected this one to be the same instead of asking me to layer the ingredients.  So, to remedy my mistake, I just mixed everything together before cooking it on low.

This is what it looked like after cooking on low for 9 hours.

At the time the crock pot was finished, my roommate and our friend had not yet arrived for dinner, so I took some time to set out the plates, bowls, and utensils.  I had asked my roommate to pick up a baguette and to ask our friend to bring a salad to complete our meal.  So we had

sourdough bread

salad

and some white wine to complete the meal.

On the right you will find an image of what the final meal looked like.  As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was more broth in the stew than I had expected.  Of course, there was nowhere near the amount of broth that is shown in the image in the cookbook, as you can see below.  I really enjoyed this stew, which is good because I had several more meals of it.  The recipe says that it makes 6 servings, which I think is almost accurate.  Our friend and I each had two servings, and if I recall correctly, I had at least 2 or 3 meals of this afterwards (so 7-8 servings total).  If I were to make this again, however, I would probably plan to add some more spice to it, or some hot sauce to just give it a kick.

I would probably estimate 200-230 calories per serving for this stew, so adding some sourdough bread (approx. 80 calories per 1 oz serving) and a salad makes for a light supper, perfect for a summer evening when you'd like something simple.