Slow Cooker Recipes & Ideas

Let it do the work for you and know you'll have wholesome meals to lean on all week long.

Ten answers for when you're craving comfort without fuss.

Pinterest put together a list of the top 10 most popular slow cooker recipes to make finding the right dinner dish just a little bit easier.

The weeknight classic, slow cooker-style.

I mean, just look at this thing.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

Slow-cooker fruit butter is a simple solution for preserving large quantities of fruit without any canning equipment or heating up the stove.

The slow cooker is the best tool for summer meal planning, and I'll show you why.

Here's your playbook for feeding a crowd without heating up the kitchen.

Put these on your dinner roster ASAP.

Have a hectic week ahead? Here are some make-ahead slow cooker recipes to get you through it.

Consider this your fall eating guide.

The slow cooker (yes, the slow cooker!) is your answer to everything from breakfast casseroles to peach cobbler.

Coming of age in the High Mall Era meant the food court was the first stop before buying a new halter top or catching Freddie Prinze Jr.’s latest flick. Despite being a mall regular, I always debated between choosing the oversized pizza slice or sticky-sweet chicken teriyaki. Chicken teriyaki always won. Today, I rarely make it into a mall, but on days when my energy is low and the need to feed my family is high, the urge for chicken teriyaki takeout is strong.

Soups, veggie dishes, and one fragrant curry.

Winter has finally made its chilly appearance where I live in California. I’m sure glad to see the much-needed rainy days, as it also gives me an excuse to hunker down and wrap a big sweater around myself to keep warm. This weather also makes me want to cook comforting food, so this week’s theme of chicken and winter greens dinners fits the bill perfectly. Can I say how much I love winter greens?

How would you like to come home tonight to the aroma of roasting potatoes and know that all you have to do is pull out a foil package and add the butter? Oh, yes, this kind of instant dinner gratification is totally possible. All you have to do is grab some potatoes and take your slow cooker down from the shelf. Baking potatoes in the slow cooker is one of those things that is so easy, it feel like there must be some kind of catch. Except…there isn’t.

These are crowd-pleasers the whole family will love.

We have always been curious about dessert in the slow cooker. We use our Crock-Pot all the time, but mostly for braises, curries, and roasts, like this slow-cooked pork roast. Many people use it to make breakfast, cooking steel-cut oats all night. But we had never tried dessert. So when we received a soufflé recipe straight from Crock-Pot, we just had to try it out. Here’s how it went…The directions for preparing the soufflé were quite similar to a traditional soufflé.

Wanna soften the blow of rent week? Get out your slow cooker! As if we needed another reason to love this appliance, it’s a great tool for keeping our weekly food budget in check — you just need to know all the best recipes to look out for. From big-batch vegetarian favorites to budget meaty meals, these are our favorite cheap recipes to make in a slow cooker. Dried beans and lentils are always a win for feeding the whole table (often with leftovers, to boot!) on the cheap.

Meatless meals have never been easier.

You already know the benefits of leaning on your slow cooker in summer, so it should come as no surprise that your Instant Pot is also invaluable. With the option for lightning-fast pressure cooking or slow cooking, this multi-cooker can do it all! From a luscious eggplant dip to a Italian beef sandwiches, here are 10 ways to use your Instant Pot all summer long. Using the pressure cooker function, the Instant Pot turns out tender grains of rice in a fraction of the time.

British chef Jamie Oliver’s recipe for chicken braised in milk has made the rounds here at Kitchn, and we all agree it is absolutely divine. It’s a recipe that takes some trust (cook a whole chicken in milk?), but trust you should — the results more than speak for themselves. This lemony, sage-infused chicken with its incredible golden sauce has become a perennial visitor to my autumn menus, and this year, I decided to take it to the slow cooker.

This is a classic “dump it and forget it” dish. Just rub the chicken with seasoning, add some lemon or orange juice and chicken broth, and set the timer. The result is the most tender chicken you’ve ever tasted with just the right amount of citrus-garlic flavor in every bite. You might wonder about the point of slow-cooking a chicken when roasting it is far quicker. For one thing, the texture and tenderness of this chicken is unbeatable.

Welcoming Brussels sprouts back to the dinner table is one of autumn’s greatest pleasures. But once you’ve served them shredded into slaw or crisped on a baking sheet, it’s time for something new. Tonight, serve tender slow-cooked Brussels sprouts dressed in a creamy garlic Parmesan sauce, all without lifting a finger. Most Brussels sprout recipes tout crispy leaves and deeply charred bottoms, but slow cooker-softened sprouts take a different approach.

Nothing says comfort like a bowl of beef stroganoff.

Your slow cooker is king of many things: tackling huge hunks of meat, potluck favorites, and meals that practically cook themselves while you work (or sleep!), to name a few. But don’t forget about all of your favorite comfort foods! Because, yes, your slow cooker is the perfect tool for turning out one heck of a batch of meatballs or some ultra-creamy mac and cheese. Need more convincing? Here are our 10 favorite comfort food classics to make in the slow cooker.

Sure, we all know the slow cooker is often the secret that makes feeding our families a little easier on busy nights (and, let’s be real, nights we don’t feel like cooking), but that just scratches the surface. This year, dear readers, you broke out your slow cookers to bring your favorite comfort foods your tables, help stock your freezers, make takeout favorites at home, and so much more. We shared a lot of slow cooker recipes with you this year, and these were your 10 favorites.

There is almost nothing your slow cooker can’t do. You might rely on it for recipes that cook all day and drop dinners that practically cook themselves, but that’s only part of what this ultra-handy appliance can do for you. From egg casseroles and soups to desserts and drinks, we’re rounding up over 75 recipes to make in your slow cooker. There’s something for everyone here, so consider this your ultimate list of slow cooker recipes.

So you can chill and watch the game.

Equal parts filling and easy to pull off.

Everyone loves to talk about how the slow cooker is perfect for cooking large, tough cuts of meat — and it’s true that it is. But let’s not forget that this ultra-handy appliance can also work wonders with beans, lentils, rice, and a whole bunch of veggies. From soups and chilis, to curries and burrito bowls, it makes bringing vegan meals to the table a mostly hands-off affair. Here are 10 meat- and dairy-free recipes to get you started.

Whether you have a slow cooker or Instant Pot, it doesn't get much simpler than this.

The slow cooker is often the hero of weeknight dinner. And while the idea of coming home to a hot dinner five nights in a row sounds broadly appealing, the thought of having dinner every night from the slow cooker itself does not. Luckily the slow cooker excels at bulk cooking. This week we’re going to use the slow cooker to batch cook sweet potatoes and salsa chicken to use throughout the week. Do this and you won’t have to cook anything on Sunday either.

When you have a hectic week on your calendar, do you properly batten down the hatches when it comes to meal plans or do you let your planning go a little awry? Our calendar this week includes the return of spring soccer, dentist and doctor appointments, and the looming tax deadline.

You’d think that the beginning of spring and the end of school would bring some relief to our already hectic schedule, but no — May brings summer camp planning, soccer parties, PTA fundraisers, and class parties that fill up our calendar quickly. Once again, I’m calling on the power of the slow cooker to feed my family this next week with a few family-friendly favorites that make dinnertime easier. I believe meal planning is the secret to stress-free weeknight dinners.

My new mantra is “just get me to October!” September has been busy with back-to-school events (Parents’ Night, Harvest Fest) and lots of solo parenting. Here’s the magic of meal plans, though — when a calendar week is hectic I can use meal planning to make one part of each day easier. (In this case dinner.

Classic tacos with a summery twist.

Between running a cattle ranch, raising kids, hosting a Food Network show, opening The Mercantile country store, and publishing a magazine, Ree Drummond — aka The Pioneer Woman — understands what a busy lifestyle looks like. So it makes sense that her forthcoming cookbook is all about taking it easy in the kitchen.

Tender braised chicken bathed in a creamy French mustard and wine sauce.

And that everyone else around the table will love, too.

When people started eating kale like crazy a number of years ago, I jumped on the wagon. One of the first ways I cooked it was low and slow, but then the trend became quick sautés and raw kale salads, even smoothies. I like a quick side-dish as much as the next guy, but I still love long-cooked kale for the way its flavor deepens and its ruffly edges crisp. It’s just the thing to eat on a winter night atop polenta or beside a piece of meat.

We started this website to help people cook more often and more joyfully, with the idea that the kitchen is the hearth of the home, the warm place. It is by spending time there that we connect and grow. But sometimes it gets so hot in the summer, you have to draw the line. A few straight days of humidity and 90°F weather, and I do not feel like being in the kitchen at all, let alone putting together a big meal.

Black beans and lots of cheese made these vegetarian enchiladas a serious crowd-pleaser.

I grew up eating my grandmother’s split pea soup, and it’s one of the first things I learned to cook when I moved away from home. For this version, I omitted one harder-to-find ingredient so I can make it without a trip to a specialty store! To me, split pea soup tastes like home. However, when I tried to replicate our family recipe on my own, I always had trouble finding a ham bone. My local grocery store just wouldn’t sell me ham hocks or a ham bone.

Not only is this one of the easiest Thai-inspired curries you’ll ever make, but it also delivers that deep, spiced flavor you expect with this kind of meal. The slow cooker works its magic, infusing a hearty pork shoulder with the pungent aromas of green curry paste and rich, warm coconut milk. It does all the heavy lifting, leaving you with a fragrant sauce and meat so tender it falls apart with the touch of your fork. The secret ingredient to this pork curry is Thai green curry paste.

What is warm-weather cooking, to you? For me, it means keeping things as simple as possible. In the spring and summertime I want meals that come together in one big pot — easy to cook and easy to reheat later. I want meals that taste like the garden, fragrant with herbs and bright flavors. I want hands-off meals, so I can retire to the back porch with a cucumber gimlet while my supper cooks. Well, this braised chicken dish fits all those requirements beautifully.

For years I’ve been cooking my broccoli until it’s bright green and ‘tender-crisp’, finishing it with a squirt of lemon and maybe a little ground black pepper. Here’s a recipe that takes things in the opposite direction by braising the broccoli with olive oil and garlic on a slow, mellow flame until it is sweet and meltingly tender. A final flourish of crunchy lemon-spiked breadcrumbs adds texture and a bright flavor boost.

The New Year brings different traditions for different folks. Some make black-eyed peas, others make firm resolutions. I make chicken stock. There’s something wonderfully industrious about making homemade stock, and this year on New Year’s Day, that’s where I found myself. I find that the soups I make throughout the year are rather predictable. In the fall, puréed soups have their day in the sun.