Slow Cooker Sunday – Caramelized Onion Soup

The weather is going to make a turn for the worst this week so if you’ve packed your slow cooker up for the summer it may be time to dig it out!

Slow Cooker Sunday is all about sharing your favourite recipes; you can either link up a blog post or a website you have used, tweet a picture with #scsunday and I’ll include your twitter handles so people can contact you about recipe or you can leave a recipe in the comments section.

This week we had Caramalized Onion Soup, for me it was reminiscent of French Onion Soup. The recipe came from Sara Lewis’ 200 More Slow Cooker Recipes. If you don’t already have one of her books I’d highly recommend them as I’ve rarely had disasters with her recipes.

Caramelized Onion Soup

Serves 4
Cooking Temp: Low
Cooking Time 4-5 hours

Ingredients

25 g of butter
2TBSP Olive Oil
500 g onions, halved and thinly sliced
1TBSP Caster Sugar
2TBSP plain flour
250ml brown ale
750ml of Beef Stock
2 bay leaves (I didn’t have any so skipped them)
1 TBSP Worcestershire Sauce
Salt and Pepper

Cheese Toast

8 slices of French bread
75 g cheddar cheese
2 TSP Worcestershire Sauce

Method:

Heat the oil and butter in a frying pan and sauté the onions for about 15 till they are soft and starting to turn golden. Then add the caster sugar and fry for another 10 minutes until they start to caramelize on the edges.
Stir in the flour, mix for about a minute. Then gradually add the stock, ale and Worcestershire sauce. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil and then transfer to the slow cooker. Cover and cook for 4-5 hours on low.
When it’s just about time to serve, sprinkle cheese onto the French bread and drizzle a bit of Worcestershire Sauce on each one. Grill until the cheese starts to bubble.
Serve the soup in large bowls and float the toast on top.

I look forward to seeing your recipes!

Slow Cooker Sunday – Potato Goan Soup 16 Sept 12

Have you used your slow cooker this week?

I’m making a slight change to Slow Cooker Sunday this week, where we share our slow cooker recipes. Please do keep linking up all of your recipes. But for those of you who don’t have time to blog or don’t have a blog, feel free to just send me a photo via twitter using the hashtag #scsunday and don’t forget to tell me what it is.

I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to. This week, using a new Soup Recipe book I modified a recipe and made Goan Potato Soup! It was delicious and we served it with Vegetarian Samosas!

Potato Goan Soup

Serves 4
Cooking Time 6-7 hours
Temp: Low

Ingredients

2 TBSP of sunflower oil
2 tsp of black mustard seeds
1 large onion, chopped
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped
½ tsp of ground turmeric
¼ tsp of Cayenne Pepper
900g of potatoes, peeled and cut into bite size cubes
1 heaped TBSP of dry curry leaves
750 ml water
Couple handfuls of frozen spinach
400ml of coconut milk
Salt and Pepper

Method

1.) Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the mustard seeds and cook until they begin to pop. Add the onion and chilli and cook for 5-6 minutes until the onion is soft. Stir in the Turmeric, Cayenne, Potatoes, Curry Leaves and water. Bring to a boil and transfer to the slow cooker, on low, for about 6 hours.

2.) 30-45 minutes before serving, stir in the spinach and coconut milk. Ensure it is piping hot before serving.

3.) Season with salt and pepper to taste

4.) Serve with Samosas, you can make your own, but I bought mine from the Deli at Morrisons, 10 for £1.50

Slow Cooker Sunday: Tomato & Red Pepper Soup

I’m on a personal mission to convert everyone to slow cooking! Yes, it means we eat healthier and saves us money on groceries as we can batch cook, but most importantly it frees you up at the end of the day for Wine O’clock! Have I convinced you yet?

What’s Slow Cooker Sunday?

Every week I run this linky so that we can share and be inspired by others recipes. It doesn’t have to be one of your own recipes; it can simply be one off the web that you love. If you don’t have a blog you can always leave your recipes in the comment section.

Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

I was absolutely thrilled that our daughter enjoyed this soup, she’s used to Campbell’s Tomato Soup in a tin. There is nothing wrong with it but it does have a lot of sugar, hence why she likes it so much.

Cooking Temp: High

Time: 3 hours

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 Onion Chopped
1 Red Pepper diced
750 g of tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp of Lazy Garlic or 1 clove
600 ml of Chicken Stock
1 TBSP Tomato Puree
2 tsp of Caster Sugar
1 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
Salt and pepper

Method:

Heat the oil in a frying pan, fry the onions for about 3 minutes until they are soft. Add the pepper, tomatoes and garlic and fry for another minute.

Add the stock, tomato puree, sugar, vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then transfer to the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or until tomatoes are soft.

Use a stick blender to puree the soup. Pour into bowls and serve with crusty bread.

Verdict

The sweetness in this soup comes from the Red Peppers and a bit of added Caster Sugar. The original recipe is from Sara Lewis. The only changes I made were using Chicken Stock as I realised I didn’t have any vegetable stock in the house and I did add a bit of milk to our daughters to cool it down before serving. I would be tempted use plum tomatoes next time.

Slow Cooker Sunday – Butternut Squash Soup with Dairylea

Here is my offering for Slow Cooker Sunday this week, a place for us to share our recipes (Linky below) and to get some inspiration.

It may seem rather odd but when it’s hot out, like it was last week, I like to have soup. I originally set out to make a Summer Squash soup but when I went to Morrison’s all I could find was butternut squash. So, I had to adapt the original recipe a bit and Anglicise it as well.

I also opted to use Dairylea instead of our normal cream cheese as it’s now made with all natural ingredients (Milk, cheese, butter and lemon). I love being able to read all the ingredients on the side of a package.

This was incredibly easy to make and had a lovely creamy texture.

Serves 6

Cooking time 6-8 hours

Cooking Temp Low

Ingredients

2 TBSP of butter or margarine
1 Medium onion chopped
500g of butter nut squash peeled and cubed
500 ml of chicken stock
½ TSP of Oregano as I didn’t have Marjoram
Black Pepper to taste
1/8 tsp of Cayenne Pepper
120g of Dairylea Cheese Spread

Method:

Melt the butter in a frying pan, then add the onion and saute for 3-5 minutes until soft.
Put the onion and rest of the ingredients, except the cream cheese into the slow cooker, and cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Check to see that the butternut squash is tender and then use a hand blender to puree till smooth. (You could use a food processor but you’d need to do it in batches.) Add the Dairlea and cook for another 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Serve with some nice crusty bread.

Disclosure: We recently attended an event for Dairylea and the Cheese Spread was complimentary.

Slow Cooker Sunday – DIY Frozen Dinners

Apparently summer is on the way and the UK is about to be hit by a mini heat wave with temperatures reaching 30 degrees on Thursday. Most of us tend to use out slow cookers more in the winter than in the summer. However, this is the perfect time to use your slow cooker as it won’t heat up your house like the oven will and you can spend more time in the garden drinking Pimms!

A friend of mine, who knows I have a thing for my slow cooker, sent me the following link, DIY Frozen Meal Packs for your Slow Cooker. I think it’s a fabulous idea. You can bung all of the ingredients for your slow cooker recipes into a Ziploc bag and then put them in the freezer so when you need a meal, just grab a bag from the freezer and bung it into the slow cooker! How easy is that! There are also some great ‘Summer’ Slow Cooker recipe ideas on there. I now just need to work out where I can put a chest freezer.

I could really use some summer recipe inspiration. Do you have any recipes I should try? Feel free to link up your own recipes or ones you found online. Alternatively, you can always leave your recipe in the comments section.

Thanking you in advance.