Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (10 page)

This dish is so closely associated with the fair city of Dublin, I’m sure it’s mentioned in the works of James Joyce, but unfortunately I’ve never got further than
here
of
Ulysses
on my repeated attempts to tackle it. I have, however, eaten and enjoyed coddle on many occasions because what could better than a steaming bowl of sausages, bacon and onions? It has restorative powers if you’ve had a few pints of the black stuff the night before too…

Controversy rages, apparently, as to whether one browns the sausages for coddle or simply simmers them as they are. Personally, while I like my own pale Irish complexion, I don’t care for it in a sausage. They look and taste better for me when they have a little colour about them. However, I don’t fry the bacon as it creates a better stock left as it is.

SERVES 4–6 WITH CABBAGE AND CRUSTY BREAD ON THE SIDE

4–6 sausages

150g bacon, cubed

500g potatoes

2 onions, sliced

1 carrot, cubed

3 sprigs of fresh thyme

600ml water

chopped fresh parsley, to serve

salt and pepper

Seal the sausages in a hot pan on the hob. You don’t need to cook them, just add some nice caramelised go-faster stripes to each side. Add them to the slow-cooker crock along with the bacon. I use thick cubes of bacon-like lardons or pancetta if I can.

Peel the potatoes and cut into small 3cm cubes. Add to the slow cooker along with the onion and carrot (carrot isn’t traditional in coddle, but I like the splash of colour). Scatter in the fresh thyme and season well.

Pour the water over it all, put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the coddle on low for 7–8 hours. Sprinkle it with some fresh parsley when cooked and serve with heaps of steamed cabbage and some bread to soak up the lovely bacon-rich stock.

One of France’s most famous dishes, cassoulet is all about the pig and the pulses combined with garlic and tomatoes and then crowned with their beloved confit duck. Made on the stove, it’s a long and complicated thing, but with a slow cooker, it’s très facile. After all, if you’ve already made the Confit Duck
here
, so all you’re doing is throwing some beans, sausages and pork belly together in the morning and leaving it to stew in its own juices until dinner time. You won’t believe something this good can be this simple.

If you don’t have any confit duck, don’t worry. You could pop another sausage or two in there instead. However, you do need to use a really good garlicky Toulouse sausage here with lovely coarse ground meat and plenty of herbs. I particularly like the ones from the orange-branded supermarket, which are frequently on offer and are so garlicky they need to be double bagged to protect other passengers when you bring them home on the bus. I make them go further by skinning them and crumbling them into the beans.

SERVES 4–6 (IN THE MANNER IN WHICH ONE EATS WHILE ON HOLIDAY)

6 Toulouse sausages

200g dried haricot beans

1 onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

4 cloves of garlic

2 bay leaves

100g smoked bacon or pancetta, cubed

250g pork belly, cubed

1 × 400g tin plum tomatoes

2 Confit Duck legs (see
here
)

500ml water

1 tablespoon duck fat

200g breadcrumbs

salt and pepper

Slit the sausages and squeeze the meat out into the slow-cooker crock. Add the beans, onion, carrot, garlic cubes and bay leaves. Tuck the bacon and pork belly into it all, placing them evenly. Season well.

Break the plum tomatoes up a bit with your hands and dollop them over it all. Nestle the duck legs into the whole thing and carefully pour the water over everything. The beans and the pork belly should be completely submerged, but it’s fine if the duck is above the water.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the cassoulet on low for 8–9 hours until the beans are plump. Put the duck fat in a frying pan on the hob over a medium heat and fry the breadcrumbs until golden and crisp. Scatter half of them over the cassoulet about 30 minutes before you are ready to eat. Stir them in. Replace the lid and allow them to soak up some of the sauce.

Serve the cassoulet in bowls, sharing the duck legs among you when the meat simply slides off the bone after its second slow cooking. Sprinkle the remaining breadcrumbs over the top for some crunch. Eat the cassoulet with some green salad on the side, preferably with some bitter leaves or chicory in it.

Feijoada is a Portuguese-Brazilian dish that combines pork, pulses and my beloved black pudding and it was introduced to me by my brother Mister North. Traditionally designed to use the knobbly, bobbly bits of the pig and add flavour to cheaper pulses, feijoada is a wholesome hearty dish that is a must for anyone who loves pork. It’s rich and delicious and, best of all, easy to make.

I’ve suggested cuts of meat that are easy to get but Feijoada can also be made with salt pork if you have it. Pigs’ ears, snouts or tails add flavour if you can get them and make use of bits we often throw away now.

As you can see from the ingredients list, this is a pretty epic dish. It’s not difficult to make, but it does have a few steps so it’s one for when you’re around the house at a weekend rather than going out to work all day. It will all fit in a 3.5-litre slow cooker, but it’s easier in a 6.5-litre one.

SERVES 4 WITH LEFTOVERS OR 6 WITH BIG APPETITES

2 pigs’ trotters

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 litre mineral water

2 red onions, diced

4 cloves of garlic, diced

200g dried black beans (f you can’t get these, use tinned kidney beans)

5 spring onions, sliced

½ bunch of fresh coriander

75g chorizo, chopped into 2cm chunks

200g black pudding

200g beef brisket, cubed

250g pork belly, in slices

100g bacon or pancetta

1 bay leaf

60ml vermouth

salt and pepper

Start by scrubbing the pigs’ trotters and putting them into a pan of cold water on the hob. Bring them to the boil and cook for 10 minutes over a medium heat to remove any impurities. Drain them and rinse any froth off them. Put them into the slow cooker. Add the sea salt and about 500ml of the mineral water. Put the lid on and simmer the trotters for 4–6 hours to create a glossy, fatty stock. Remove the now soft trotters from the stock and pour the stock into a bowl. Reserve any meat from the trotters and discard the skin and sinew.

Add the onion and garlic to the slow cooker with the dried black beans. Lay the beans out like a carpet on the base of the crock.

Add the spring onion and the chopped stalks of the fresh coriander and scatter over the beans. Add the chorizo to the crock. Skin the black pudding and crumble over the beans. Set the cubed brisket and pork belly on top of it and scatter with the bacon or pancetta.

Pour the reserved pork stock over it all and add enough of the remaining mineral water to make sure the meat is at least half covered. You may not need it all. It’s important to use mineral water as black beans refuse to cook if there is any limescale in the water at all. Add the bay leaf and the vermouth.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the feijoada on low for 8–9 hours. About an hour before you are ready to serve, lift the pork belly and brisket out with a slotted spoon and reserve. Take a heaped cupful of beans out and purée them with a blender or a potato masher and stir back through the rest of the beans to thicken them up. The black pudding should have melted into the beans to create a thick, dark gravy and the puréed beans enhance that.

Add the meat back in and cook it all for another hour or two. You can’t really overcook this dish. Serve with boiled rice and wilted greens and a splash or two of hot sauce to cut through the richness of the dish. Any leftovers keep and reheat well and the flavours intensify beautifully. Scatter with fresh coriander leaves before eating for flavour and colour.

This is, admittedly, a rather underwhelming name for a really outstanding dish. A pork shoulder bathed in full-fat milk, lemon and garlic, it makes the most tender meat you can imagine. I was first introduced to this by my friend Jeanie one Christmas and it is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. It was among the first recipes I adapted to the slow cooker. Quite difficult and time consuming to cook on the hob without burning the milk, it works perfectly here.

You’ll end up with lots of lovely tasty gravy here, probably more than you can eat with the pork, but it freezes beautifully once thickened up. It is important you use Caramelised Onions in the dish (from
here
) as raw ones will curdle the milk.

SERVES 2–4 WITH LEFTOVERS

1kg piece of pork shoulder or hand of pork

½ teaspoon mustard powder

½ bulb of garlic, cloves peeled but whole

150g Caramelised Onions (see
here
)

6 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 heaped teaspoon dried thyme

2 pieces of lemon peel

900ml full-fat milk

1 bay leaf

2 tablespoons cornflour

2 tablespoons cold water

salt and pepper

Season the pork with the salt and pepper and mustard powder. Put it directly on the meat if you are using the shoulder of pork and onto the skin if using a hand of pork.

Put the peeled whole garlic and the caramelised onions into the slow-cooker crock to make a bed for the pork. Put half the thyme here and 1 piece of lemon peel. Place the pork on top of it all.

Pour the milk over the pork slowly so the seasonings don’t wash off completely. You want the meat to be almost fully covered, so don’t be surprised if you need slightly more or less milk than stated due to the shape of the meat used. Float the bay leaf and second piece of the lemon peel in the milk.

Cook the pork on low for 8–10 hours. The combination of the slow cooking and the lactic acid in the milk make the pork unbelievably tender. I turned mine halfway through the cooking to cover the meat totally as a little bit was poking out, but this was more fussiness on my part.

When the pork is cooked, gently lift it out of the milk. It will be meltingly tender and probably likely to fall apart if you aren’t careful. Remove the skin if you are using the hand of pork. Set on a plate to serve and allow to rest while you make the gravy.

Pour the cooked milk mixture through a sieve into a saucepan, leaving the aromatics behind. Lift the onions and a couple of the cloves of garlic out of the sieve and add to the milk. Heat it all gently.

Mix the cornflour and water together and stir it into the milk mixture. Keep stirring as it all thickens into a glossy, smooth gravy. Serve on the side of the sliced pork. I love this dish with sautéed rosemary potatoes and a green salad. It also makes lovely cold cuts.

A pork shank is a really inexpensive cut of meat that takes beautifully to slow cooking. I like to go a little bit Gallic with mine and cook it with garlicky lentils for a really easy meal that is equally good in summer or winter. I keep the bones from the shanks and use them to add to the stock when making Pho
here
, making this frugal piece of meat go even further.

You may not find this cut in every supermarket. I tend to get mine at the one where they do all the butchery themselves at the counter and then wrap them in little blue trays. Do use the Puy lentils if you can. A little more expensive than green lentils, they hold their shape without becoming mushy in the slow cooker.

SERVES 2 WITH LEFTOVERS OR 4 WITHOUT

2 onions, finely diced

4 cloves of garlic, finely diced

200g Puy lentils (uncooked weight)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

300ml hot chicken stock

100ml boiling water, if necessary

1 pork shank, approximately 1kg

salt and pepper

Add your onion and garlic to the slow cooker along with the lentils and oregano. Pour the hot chicken stock over them all and add up to 100ml boiling water if the lentils aren’t fully covered.

Season the skin of the pork shank well with salt and pepper and place the shank on top of the lentils. The bottom of it will be covered.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the whole thing on low for 8 hours. By the end the meat will be falling away from the bone and the lentils will be winking at you like little green jewels.

Remove the skin from the shank and serve the juicy meat with a generous spoonful of the lentils in deep bowls, along with any of the velvety soft sauce the lentils have made.

Few things work better in a slow cooker than pulled pork. At its most basic, it is a hunk of pork slow cooked until the strands of the meat can be pulled apart with two forks. It’s also a fantastic way to make a joint of meat go a long way by adding masses of flavour and creating amazing leftovers.

Flavour combinations depend on your imagination. I’ve done various versions: glazed with orange, rubbed with cumin and coriander or basted with barbecue flavours, but this slightly Italian-inspired one my mum makes is my favourite. Mainly because it tastes sensational, but partly because it also makes a great pizza topping…