It has only been a week since school started for us and it already feels like summer never happened. Without careful planning, dinner can easily be an afterthought at best (take out, anyone?) or a full-blown disaster of screaming children, burnt food, and unhealthy choices. My slow-cooker (Crockpot) has been a life-saver for years now. You can also use an Instant Pot in the slow-cooker setting but I have not tried to do that. Stay tuned for a different Instant Pot-specific post later this year.
There are many different ways to use the slow-cooker that can help save time, eat healthy, and have less dishes to clean. Keep reading if these are things that sound good to you.
Hack #1 – Freeze meals ahead
I have some previous posts about how to meal prep, which include how to freeze Crockpot-ready meals but did you know it is ok to throw them in without them fully defrosting? I often forget to take out my frozen meals a full 24 hours before I want to cook them. By often, I mean always! If I can, I get them out overnight, which is usually about 10 hours before they go in. You can still go ahead and throw a frozen meal into the slow-cooker in the morning. I would recommend adding an extra hour of cooking if possible but depending on what it is, you may not even need that!
Hack #2 – Use liners
My mother-in-law got me a pack of slow-cooker liners a few years ago and I love using them to save time after dinner. Dinner is cooked in one dish and then you don’t even have to wash it. I highly recommend! You may still need to wipe the outside of the slow-cooker as well as the inside underneath the ceramic liner but that doesn’t take too much time.
Hack #3 – Make breakfast
You can make steel-cut oats and other forms of hot cereal in the slow-cooker. You can make scrambled eggs and other breakfast egg dishes also, but I haven’t tried that yet. There are lots of overnight oats slow-cooker recipes. This is great if you have a large family and kids that will actually eat hot cereal (unlike mine…). Just pour it in a bowl and serve! When I do it just for myself, I refrigerate the leftovers in individual containers that are easy to heat up in the morning before going to work.
Hack #4 – Use it on your way out to work
I sometimes forget I can throw food that has not been previously frozen in the slow cooker. Every once in a while, I just grab whatever chicken I have left and google a quick recipe to throw in before going to work or during a busy weekend day. Chicken teriyaki, chicken tacos, or honey garlic chicken with chicken thighs are some of my favorite things to do when I am out of my pre-made slow-cooker meals.
Hack #5 – Freeze the leftovers
We often have a lot of leftovers from our freezer meals. Even if we eat the same meal twice in one week or repurpose it into one or two more meals, there may still be food left over! Since the food is now cooked, you can freeze it and eat it later. You can defrost it ahead or time or use the defrost microwave setting, then heat in the microwave like you would anything else.
Pro-tips:
- Use slow-cooker leftovers for your own lunch
- My favorite use for the slow-cooker (but totally unrelated to healthy eating and feeding your family) is to heat up mulled wine or spiced apple cider with whiskey or rum in the winter