Table of Contents
24
Working Timesaving Pressure Cooker
Preparing nutritious foods with whole ingredients is a snap and here are four good reasons to try it.
8 How to Use a
Pressure Cooker
The appliance may seem intimidating, but in fact, it’s convenient for your busy lifestyle.
12 Cooking with Cast-Iron
More than just a skillet, this tool sweats onions, beats uneven heat, and cleans up with ease.
15 Woodstove Cooking
Why start up the stove top when the woodstove can heat your home and cook your supper?
4
18 The Amazing Cast-
Iron Dutch Oven
Don’t cast off this old-fashioned, hardworking cookware! Add one-pot versatility to your camp, hearth, and backyard cooking.
22 The Joy of Clay
Pot Cooking
Transfer the unique flavors of an open fire using this ancient technique of slow heating a ceramic vessel.
24 Slow Cookers to
the Rescue
Returning after a long day to find dinner ready to carry to the table is a great relief. Try any one of 14 fine recipes specifically for slow cookers.
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32 Savory Dinners
Simple to Make
A bevy of new recipes for an old friend, your slow cooker. Create delicious meals easily, and handy leftovers for later.
39 Weekly Meal Plan:
4 Recipes for Slow Cooker Pulled Pork
Tender, slow cooked pork is the feature for these delectable standards that will get you and yours through an entire week.
42 Fry, Bake, Sear in Cast Iron A compilation of meals all made in a cast-iron skillet from rabbit pot pie to refried beans.
15
Getty Images/Richard Rudisill
4 Get to Know the Wonder-
cover photograph:
Working long hours? Pull out the slow cooker to help put dinner on the table in a jiffy.
The Mother Earth News One-Pot Meals
48 48 Easy One-Pot Meals
Want to serve up convenient, wall-balanced dishes without making a mess of your kitchen? Now you’re cookin’!
52 Chicken Pot Pie
From stock pot to pot pie; follow these recipes for both delicious chicken stock to classic comfort food at its best.
56 Punching Up Pizza
with Cast Iron
A pizza cooked in a cast-iron pan takes homemade pizza making to professional levels!
58 15 Meals for the
Slow Cooker
Make mealtime — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — simpler using these recipes and your slow cooker. Save time, money, and avoid the mess.
64 Savory Pies
Give in to your cravings for delicious and hearty meatfilled pies.
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52
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68 One Dish Wonders
Spare time, not taste, with these slow cooker recipes ready when you walk in the door.
72 Super-Easy Slow
Cooker Soup Recipes
Whip up these simple slow cooker soups. No waiting, no mess, just delicious.
76 Six Easy Casseroles
These one-dish delights are sure to please.
82 Debut Delicious Desserts
58
Cast-iron cookware produces particularly wonderful results when it comes to the sweet ending to any meal.
86 Jams, Preserves,
Butter, Oh, My
To preserve fresh fruit — from your garden or the local farmers market — consider one of these recipes.
90 Slow Cooker, Great Sweets Add desserts to the list of recipes that utilize your slow cooker.
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90
Woodstove Cooking
No need to worry about an extra cookstove when the woodstove that keeps your home warm and cozy will work just as well. By Katie Martin Photographs by Lori Dunn
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oodstove cooking is an art form that delivers a double dose of comfort — heartwarming food and cozy cool-weather heat. We have been heating solely with wood for more than 20 years and have learned to make the most of that heat by preparing some of our favorite meals on the fire. Many folks believe that a cookstove is required for cooking with wood, but that’s not the case. A regular woodstove also will provide you with many enjoyable meals. Baking potatoes in the woodstove and boiling a nice pot of pinto beans on top readily come to mind, but with a little imagination you can take woodstove cooking to the next level. First, a few basics. Cooking in or on a woodstove takes a few extra precautions. One always needs to remember that the surface outside, as well as the coals inside, can be extremely hot. So, a little extra caution is needed. The simplest things to cook in the woodstove are things you cook on coals.
Baked Potatoes or Sweet Potatoes 1 Pierce potato with fork and wrap in foil. If coals are red-hot, wrap twice in foil. 2 Cook on coals for 20 to 30 minutes. Use large tongs to place potatoes in stove and to remove from coals.
Hobo Pockets can feature just about anything you like, including leftovers from yesterday’s dinner.
www.MotherEarthNews.com
15
Last night, we had rabbit stew for dinner, courtesy of the slow cooker. I think stewing is a great way to cook rabbit; since it’s a lean protein, it has a tendency to toughen up while cooking. If you don’t have rabbit, sub in chicken thighs instead, but remove the skin before cooking, so things don’t get all greasy.
a vegetarian, just omit the beef and substitute vegetable broth.) • 2 tablespoons oil • 1⁄2 pound beef stewing meat, chopped into bite-sized pieces • 1 small head red or green cabbage, chopped into bite-sized pieces • 3 small potatoes, peeled, chopped into bite-sized pieces • 3 large carrots, peeled, chopped into bitesized pieces • 1 large onion, peeled, finely chopped • 2 large garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped • 2 cups tomato juice • 2 cups beef broth • 3 cups water • 1 bay leaf • Salt and pepper, to taste 1 Heat the oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the stewing meat and brown, turning once, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and place the meat in a slow cooker. 2 Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Place the lid on the slow cooker and set on Low for 8 to 10 hours. 1 Remove the bay leaf before ladling the soup out into bowls. Serve piping hot.
30 MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO ONE-POT MEALS
Easy Slow Cooker Rabbit Stew for Two By Laura Damron My slow cooker is easily 15 years old or more. It’s not much to look at, and it only has three settings: Off, Low and High. But you know what? It’s pretty darn close to perfect. It does everything I want it to do, namely cook things evenly and thoroughly, without much help from me at all. I set it up, walk away and 6 to 8 hours later, we have a perfectly cooked dinner ready to go on the table (and leftovers, if I do it right). All from one pot! Aside from being convenient, using a slow cooker is also cost effective. Dried grains and beans are nutritious and inexpensive. Soups can easily be scaled to last for several meals. Stew takes inexpensive cuts of meat and cooks them to tender perfection. And then there’s stock: Any time we get a rotisserie chicken, I break out the slow cooker afterwards and toss the carcass in for stock. Some meats, like pot roasts, benefit from searing prior to going into the slow cooker. Other foods, like stew meat or chicken, can just go right in the cooker along with whatever veggies you’re using.
1 Combine the first 11 ingredients in a slow cooker. Cook on High for 6 hours, or on Low for 8. Check the meat and/or carrots for doneness before serving, to make sure everything is cooked through. Once it’s all cooked, taste and adjust seasoning if needed. 2 Put the frozen peas in about 30 minutes before serving (less if you thaw them first). Ladle the veggies and meat over your favorite cooked rice or egg noodles, and enjoy.
Seriously, it’s that easy … to the point where it’s almost embarrassing to type it out and call it a recipe. Oh, one thing: I left the legs on the bone, but if you wanted to de-bone them first, you can. I prefer using meats with bones because they add extra nutrients during the cooking process, but sometimes I do have to fish them out if the meat gets really tender and falls apart. (These legs did not fall apart; I served them whole and on the bone.) It’s not a big deal for large bones like legs and such, but it can be a pain — and possibly a choking hazard — when there are little bones involved.
iStock/lana malamatidi
Slow-Cooker Cabbage and Beef Soup
• Rabbit legs, front and back (or four chicken thighs, skin removed) • 1⁄2 teaspoon poultry seasoning • 1⁄2 teaspoon garlic powder • Salt and pepper to taste • 4 large carrots, cut into 1⁄2-inch thick rounds • 3 stalks celery, 1⁄2-inch diced • 1 small onion, 1⁄2-inch diced • 5 medium mushrooms, quartered (I use the brown Cremini, but white ones are fine too) • 1 cup water or chicken stock • 2 tablespoons corn starch, dissolved in 1⁄4 cup cold water • 1⁄2 cup frozen peas • Rice or egg noodles, cooked as directed on packaging
Savory Dinners
Simple to Make Use your slow cooker to create delicious meals easily, with the nifty bonus of tasty leftovers. Compiled by Capper’s Farmer Staff
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hink outside the box when it comes to your slow cooker. Any number of recipes can be prepared in the handy cooker, and it could be the best thing to happen to weekday dinners. Soups and stews may be the norm for slow cookers, but give it a whirl with chicken, beef roasts, pork tenderloins, or wild game at the center of a recipe. The slow, moist cooking conditions are
ideal for cuts of meat that may be a bit tougher than the more expensive cuts. And don’t forget that drier meats, such as wild game, can benefit from those same cooking techniques. In addition, you can add that chicken or roast to the slow cooker in the morning, and by the time you get back from a long day at work, dinner will be ready. Cook some rice or noodles, toss a green salad, or butter a few slices of homemade bread, and you’ll be in foodie heaven.
The following recipes were selected from the Capper’s Farmer recipe archives. Create one of these dishes for dinner later this week, or convert a family favorite recipe for the slow cooker for a delicious mid-week dinner or weekend gathering.
Lemon Rosemary Chicken By Sarah Olson Putting a whole chicken in the slow cooker produces the juiciest, tenderest chicken you will ever taste. The veggies are optional, and the cookbook includes a couple variations of seasoning below if you don’t like rosemary. Yields 4 servings. • 41⁄2 pound chicken • 1⁄4 cup butter, melted • 1 lemon • 4 carrots, peeled and halved • 1 large red onion, peeled and quartered • 1 lemon • 1⁄2 teaspoon dried rosemary • 1⁄2 teaspoon salt • 1⁄4 teaspoon paprika • 1⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder • 1⁄8 teaspoon pepper
Lemon Rosemary Chicken
32 MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO ONE-POT MEALS
1 Spray a 6-quart slow cooker with nonstick spray. Make 5 balls out of foil and place in slow cooker. Remove neck and any other loose bits from inside the chicken and discard. 2 Place the chicken on top of foil balls and brush on melted butter. Cut the lemon
Weekly Meal Plan: 4 Recipes for Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Eat tender, slow-cooked pulled pork throughout the week as tacos, stir-fry, sandwiches and potstickers. By Tim Nauman and Tabitha Alterman
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he average American spends just 30 minutes preparing food each day. If you’re among those in a rush to get food on the table, consider becoming friends with weekly mealplanning — a clever strategy for saving time and money. In this meal plan, we make one big batch of tangy, fall-off-the-bone slow cooker pulled pork infused with aromatic onions, garlic and vinegar, and use it to create four meals you can put together quickly throughout the week. This preparation is quite forgiving, so it’s easy to adjust quantities or seasoning, and these cuts of meat are far less expensive than chops, ribs and steaks, so consider buying locally raised, grass-fed meat. This series of recipes is designed to feed about four people per meal.
Slow Cooker Pulled Pork
Corbis
Recipe by Tim Nauman
• 10-pound Boston butt or pork shoulder (with bone in for enhanced flavor) • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper • Paprika (sweet, smoked or a mix) • Chili powder (mild, medium or hot) • 6 to 8 red and white onions, peeled and quartered • 10 cloves garlic, or to taste, peeled and smashed but left whole www.MotherEarthNews.com
39
By Doug Bittinger
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y wife and I enjoy having a homemade pizza on Saturday nights. This pizza ends up being at least two dinners, sometimes a lunch as well. So it’s worth the effort we put into doing it up right. Recently my wife and I celebrated our birthdays — just six days apart. Part of our Birthday Week celebration was a trip to the Lodge Cast Iron factory outlet store in a nearby city where we bought several new pieces of cast-iron cookware. One of these is a 16-inch cast-iron pizza pan. Around a hundred years ago (or so it seems), I worked my way through the management training program of a popular pizza chain. On my way to management, I learned a lot about baking pizza by making and serving many thousands of them. One of the secrets of why a take-out pizza tastes better than most homemade is the oven. Pizza shops use slate bed ovens and cook the pizza on thin screens laying right on that 450 F slab of rock. This cooks the bottom crust evenly and browns it for a nice crunch. It’s hard to get that on a steel pan in the oven at home. This cast-iron pan has us making pizzas that are a lot like what I served up as a pro. While making the sauce (using home-canned tomatoes and fresh herbs from our garden), I’m slicing and dicing the meats and veggies. These vary from week to week. When assembly time
56 MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO ONE-POT MEALS
comes I want everything prepared so I can get it all on the pizza as quickly as possible. About 40 minutes before I want to serve, I rub a thin coat of cooking oil onto the pizza pan by making a small wadding pad out of paper towel (in another previous life I was a furniture maker). Then I put the pizza pan in the oven and preheat to 425 F. While that’s heating, I make up the crust and knead it on the floured counter top, but I roll it out on a piece of parchment. NOTE: If you use Fleischmann’s Pizza Yeast, you mix the yeast right in with the flour, sugar, oil, and water; and the dough does not need to rise. Just mix it up, knead, roll it out. If the dough must rise, allow an extra 30 to 60 minutes. Take the pizza pan out of the oven, flip the crust onto the pan, peel off the parchment, and I’m ready to “sauce and cheese the skin,” as we used to say, and add my toppings — quickly, so the pan doesn’t cool. Back in the oven for 20 minutes (less if you don’t use as many toppings) and when it comes out the pizza will slide right off the pan onto a cutting board. The crust is evenly browned and the cheese is bubbly and a little browned (especially if you add a little cheddar to your cheese blend as I do). Cut, serve, and enjoy a pizza cooked to pizza-shop perfection thanks to a cast-iron pizza pan. For a variation of this theme, try a breakfast pizza made with pepper gravy as sauce and topped with scrambled eggs, cooked sausage, red bell pepper slices, and cheese.
courtesy
A homemade pizza is a weekly event at our house, and the recent purchase of a cast-iron pizza pan has taken our pizza-making to professional levels.
Lodge Cast-Iron Mfg.
PUNCHING UP PIZZA WITH CAST IRON
Savory Pies Give in to your cravings for delicious and hearty meat-filled pies. Article and photographs by Karen K. Will “Big Buck” Stromboli is filled with ground venison, cheese and spices, all wrapped in a soft, yeasty dough.
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fter a long, cold day, nothing is more satisfying than a warm pie, bursting with the savory delights of meat and vegetables. Cold weather just makes a body crave starch and fat. Could it be our increased need for calories in order to maintain body heat? Or perhaps once we’ve removed ourselves from the supermarket culture of food — where everything is available year-round — our body tunes into its natural wisdom of eating with the seasons. A light repast of salads and fruit suffice in the warm months; meat, cheese and root vegetables are what we desire during the cold ones. Whether the meat you’re craving is encased in a buttery dough, topped with mashed potatoes — or both — your body will get what it wants in these savory pies. I promise, everyone will love these creations of comfort food and come away from the dinner table rubbing their bellies. The beauty of savory pies is that they’re endlessly versatile. Virtually any kind of meat or vegetable can be substituted according to your taste. If the recipe calls for chopped chicken (as in the pot pie), use chopped steak or leftover stew meat and beef broth if that’s what you have on hand. For ground beef or lamb, substitute ground venison, pork or turkey if you prefer that. Though my first choice is always 100percent homemade, if you’re short on time, you can always use store-bought crusts and doughs as well. These pies can be made ahead of time and frozen for later consumption. What fun it would be to spend a weekend day 64 MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO ONE-POT MEALS
making little meat pies for the freezer! With our hectic lives and booked schedules, soon you’ll be thankful you did.
‘Big Buck’ Stromboli My dear friend Gwen Regan loves the stromboli that her mother, Lisa Salmon, makes and described it with such enthusiasm that I asked her to tell me about its ingredients and what makes it so special. “It’s a scrumptious little meat pie that’s addicting. I ask my mom to make
it all the time!” There’s usually plenty of venison in the freezer at the Salmon home, so Lisa incorporates it into many different dishes. Substitute ground beef or pork if you’re not lucky enough to have venison. Lisa found the original recipe in Missouri Conservationist from the Department of Conservation.
15-Minute Veal Piccata and Asparagus Veal piccata is one of the easiest dishes you can make, and you can easily substitute chicken or flank steaks for the veal. Piccata is simply a method of preparing food, usually involving thin slices of meat, coated in flour, sautéed, and served in a sauce. Normally the veal cutlets are pounded until they’re very thin. My version here can be served over rice or pasta. From 30-Minute One-Pot Meals by Joanna Cismaru. Yields 4 servings. • • • • • • • •
One-Dish WONDERS Spare time, not taste, with these slow cooker dinners, ready when you walk in the door. By Kellsey Trimble
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s springtime planting picks up, and the farm’s to-do list lengthens, cooking wholesome, filling meals can sometimes fall by the wayside. In the hustle and bustle of getting seeds into the ground and the excitement of watching newborn animals, the last thing on our minds is spending a bunch of time in the kitchen — especially cleaning up a sink
68 MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO ONE-POT MEALS
full of dishes. And therein lies the beauty of the recipes that follow. These dishes have a ton of flavor, and the only thing they lack is the amount of kitchen equipment involved in making them. After a day of mending fences, sowing corn, or delivering calves, it’s nice to be able to whip up something simple and delicious in no time. Here’s to happy planting and clean kitchens!
• • •
11⁄2 pounds veal cutlets, about 8 Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 ⁄2 cup all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 ⁄2 cup dry white wine 1 cup chicken stock 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 bunch of asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces 2 tablespoons capers, drained Lemon slices, for garnish Fresh parsley, for garnish
1 Season veal cutlets with salt and pepper on both sides. Place flour in shallow dish, and dredge cutlets in flour, shaking off any excess. 2 In large skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add cutlets, and working quickly, cook veal until golden brown on both sides, about 1 minute per side. Transfer cutlets to a plate and set aside. 3 Deglaze skillet with white wine and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan, for about 3 minutes until wine has reduced by about half. Add chicken stock, lemon juice, asparagus, and capers. Cook for about 5 minutes; sauce will thicken slightly. Season with salt and pepper. 4 Add cutlets back into skillet and cook until heated through, about 1 minute, then garnish with lemon slices and parsley. 5 Serve immediately.