Archive for Slowcooker

Recipe ReDux: A Trend in Every Pot – BBQ tempeh slowcooker chili

January 21, 2013 Recipe ReDux, Recipes, Slowcooker, Vegetable, vegetarian 10 comments

Slow-aged meat, raw winter vegetables, barrel-aged hot sauce and artisanal soft serve – the recipe for the weirdest sundae ever? Thankfully, no. These are some of the food trends the New York Times predicted will change up our plates in 2013 (but ideally not all combined together).

For January’s Recipe ReDux, the group was asked to jump on a new-year food trend with an original dish prepared in a single pot, slowcooker, etc. So I skimmed the (meat heavy, foodie-focused) list and found one a nutrition nerd could get behind: fermented foods.

We’ve tackled these in a previous ReDux, where I made pickled-jalapeno-topped sweet potatoes with egg. The trend seems to be gaining steam, fueled by the gut-health benefits of consuming “friendly” microbes.

This time, I’m promoting some probiotics in the new year with tempeh, or fermented soy bean. According to Wikipedia, this firm-textured, whole-bean food originates from Indonesia. The fermentation process binds the beans together and gives it an earthy, nutty flavor that is much heartier than that better-known soybean product, tofu. To play off tempeh’s “meatier” texture, I combined it with butternut squash and some BBQ flavor to make a quick and simple slowcooker chili.

The sweetness of molasses, brown sugar and bell peppers rounds out the tang of the fire-roasted tomatoes and tempeh, while the squash lends a nice hearty chunkiness. Sweeten things up for your GI flora with this easy-to-assemble recipe:

BBQ tempeh and butternut squash chili

4 servings, approx. 315 calories each

1 package tempeh, cubed

1 red onion, chopped

2 red, orange or yellow bell peppers, seeded and chopped

1 1/12 cups butternut squash (about1 lb), peeled, seeded and diced

2 14.5-ounce cans fire-roasted tomatoes

3 Tbs brown sugar

2 Tbs molasses

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 ½ tsp paprika

½ tsp chili powder

2 ½ Tbs apple cider vinegar

1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce

3 Tbs ketchup

1 cup water

Combine everything in a slowcooker and cook on high for 4 hours, or low for 6-8 hours. Add small increments of water as necessary to achieve your desired consistency.

Ready to take on some new trends in the new year? Check out the links to more recipes from my fellow ReDuxers:


Meat CSA week

January 25, 2011 Beef, Chicken, Dinner, Meat, Pork, Slowcooker, Week 4 One comment

Everyone ready for a 180? Last week, I waxed poetic about legumes and featured a slew of vegetarian-friendly dishes. This week, it’s all about the meat we received in our share from Stillman’s farm meat CSA.

Slowcooker rosemary garlic chicken thigh, with sweet potatoes & veggies

I realize that meat is a major fork in the road toward food-related harmony, so let me first describe where I’ve set up my road-side stand. I eat meat from hooved, winged, and sea-faring animals. While I’m not a vegetarian, roughly 2/3 of my meals are plant-centric and meat-free. I appreciate that a meat-free diet has health and environmental benefits and can provide optimal nutrition, recognizing that supplements are usually required to achieve recommended intakes of several nutrients (such as vitamin B12) that are difficult to obtain from plant-derived foods alone. I agree that, on a societal level, we should be eating less meat and sourcing the meat we do eat from small-scale, integrated producers (as Simon Fairlie argues in his recent book).

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