Our entire family loves pasta so I am always looking for a new way to serve it to them. For years I have made crock pot lasagna for them but I have found it takes a bit more time because you have to season and brown your meat first.
Today I decided to whip up a dish for Meatless Monday and came up with an easy crock pot penne pasta dish. It was originally supposed to be crock pot ziti however the grocery store was out of ziti so we went with penne instead.
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It’s no secret how much we love to use our Crock-Pot around here. We find that it is much easier to feed our large family this way. We can make big enough batches of food and it’s also great to be able to prep and make something in the morning, toss it in the crock-pot and leave it to cook during the day while we do other things. Crock-pot cooking definitely makes things a lot easier around here.
Mother Nature was evil to us once again today……yesterday was wearing flip flops and had grass and today I woke up to this.
Since Mother Nature decided to deliver snow to us today, we thought today was the perfect day for soup so Alex got to work this morning prepping all the ingredients and throwing them in the crock-pot for Cheeseburger Soup!
For those who love beef stew and love to use their crock-pot, this is the recipe for you!
Stew Ingredients
2lbs stew meat cut into 1 inch pieces
4 carrots sliced
2 ribs celery sliced
2 onions sliced
8 sliced mushrooms
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup beef broth
14.5 ounce can dinced tomatoes with juice
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup water
Dumpling Ingredients
1.5 cups of Bisquick
1/2 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
Stew Directions
Combine the beef, celery, carrots, onions, tomatoes, thyme, pepper, mustard, mushrooms, and beef broth in your crock-pot.
Cook and cover on low heat for 8 to 10 hours or on high heat for 4 to hours.
Once vegetables and beef are tender combine the water and flour and stir slowly into the stew. Cover and heat for 10 minutes and prepare dumpling mixture.
Dumpling Directions
Combine the Bisquick, thyme, sage and garlic salt and stir in the milk until the mixture is moist.
Once the mixture is ready, drop spoonfuls of the dough on top of the beef stew, cover and cook on high for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, serve and enjoy!
All of my kids are crazy about chili and I have been looking for a quick and easy way to whip up a batch instead of having a pot on the stove boiling and simmering all day until it was ready to eat. I finally decided I would try making chili in the crock pot and I will never make it any other way again.
Now I know a lot of people don’t put noodles in chili, but I do because it soaks up the juice and there is less mess when feeding little ones!
Ingredients
2 lbs lean ground beef
1.5 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 cans (15oz each) diced tomatoes — DO NOT DRAIN
2 cans (15oz each) kidney beans drained
1 medium onion chopped
Elbow Macaroni (optional)
Directions
Brown hamburger in a pan along with onions, 2 teaspoons chili powder, 1 teaspoon ground cumin. Once browned, drain and combine hamburger and remaining ingredients (including 1 teaspoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon ground cumin) in crock pot. Once everything is in the crock pot give it a stir and cook on low for 7-8 hours.
Enjoy!
