Today I will show you two super-quick, easy and healthy recipes to make in your slow cooker.
One is an all-in-one-pot Bolognese that takes literally five minutes to make. The other, a super simple-to-make Bone Broth (stock) that I call liquid gold! This can be made from the left-over bones you may have if you cooked the roast chicken from my last newsletter.
This easy and cheap-to-make Bolognese requires absolutely no chopping or cooking of the onions… and no browning of the meat! It can simply be thrown into the slow cooker in the morning so that when coming home late after school or work, dinner is ready!
Bone broth is packed with gut-healthy nutrients but can be very expensive to buy – and is actually very easy to make using left-over bones (e.g. if you’ve cooked chicken thighs or a beef roast) ... so is a great thing to make in your slow cooker with very little effort or cost!
Enjoy!
Claudine xxx
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Quick 'n' Easy One-Pot Bolognese
A cheap and easy way to make Bolognese with minimal washing up!
Place all of the following ingredients into a food processor / blender and pulse until roughly chopped:
🍝 5 carrots, peeled
🍝 1 onion, peeled
🍝 3 cloves garlic, peeled
🍝 3 tbsp tomato purée
🍝 1 tin cherry tomatoes
🍝 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
🍝 7 tbsp sugar-free ketchup
🍝 1 tsp sea or Himalayan salt
🍝 Optional: a few mushrooms, celery or other veg of your choice, roughly chopped
Add the following and pulse once or twice to mix:
🍝 500g pork mince (15% fat if possible)
🍝 250g beef mince (15% fat if possible)
Place on medium/high and cook for 8 hours. This will depend on your slow cooker; my ceramic slow cooker doesn't burn on high, but with other slow cookers it may work better to put it on medium.
When ready to eat open the lid, stir well and add:
🍝 150g pasta (I break up spaghetti or use a small pasta like trofie)
🍝 350ml boiling chicken stock (bone broth) or water
Close the lid and continue to cook on high for 25 mins.
Serve with grated cheese or nutritious yeast (a good dairy-free option as it tastes like cheese and is full of B12, zinc, folic acid and more).
Top tip: my kids love it when I stir in a bit of cream cheese to the pot just before serving - it cools it down and makes it super creamy!
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Gut-healthy Bone Broth
Although packed with minerals, vitamins, amino acids and essential fatty acids, bone broths are expensive to buy. So I wanted to show how to cheaply and easily make it yourself.
I use my slow cooker as then you can leave your stock all day and night to extract all the nutrients but you won’t have a steamy kitchen or have to be around to keep topping it up with water and checking it.
Place the following in your slow cooker and cook on low for 12 hours (and up to 1.5 days):
🦴 1 kg chicken or beef bones (raw or leftover cooked ones)*
🦴 Enough water to cover the bones completely, plus a bit extra
🦴 Optional: 3 tbsp cider vinegar to help draw the nutrients out from the bones
🦴 Optional: carrots, bay leaves, herbs, garlic, onion, peppercorns or seaweed - for extra nutrients but no one can taste it!
Strain the liquid through a sieve into a large sauté pan or pot and discard the bones / veg. Reduce the liquid on a high heat until you have a thicker liquid.
You can now store this in a bowl in the fridge and help yourself to spoonfuls for up to a week for flavoursome soups and sauces. You can also freeze it in silicone or plastic ice cube containers and defrost and use it over the next few months.
P.s Bone broth also reduces down into the most delicious sauce (just like you have in restaurants). As you can just take an ice cube of it out of your freezer whenever you want, this means you can make the most amazing, creamy steak sauce at the drop of a hat.
This is also ideal to do in advance and use for Christmas Day as an instant, super tasty gravy! Just add some red wine, mustard and cranberry sauce if you like to finish it off on the day.
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More Bone Broth Recipes
There are so many recipes I have created using this stock recipe, so below I've shared a few more. Click on the links below to access each recipe.
I'm passionate about bone broth because it helps support gut health, skin, bone, joint health and more. I hope you feel inspired to get cooking with it!
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