Homemade Yogurt

I have three recipes I've pulled from and need somewhere to write this one down!

Homemade Yogurt in the Crock Pot

1/2 gallon (8 cups) milk
1 Tbsp yogurt (must have listed in the ingredients active live cultures-I used Fage Total 2%)

1. Pour the half gallon of milk into your crock pot and turn it on low. Cook for 2 hours and 45 minutes.
2. After it cooks, turn crock pot off and let cool for 3 hours or until the temperature drops between 110 and 120 degrees.
3. Spoon a small amount of milk into a small bowl and add 1 Tbsp of yogurt to it. Mix together.
4. Pour mixture back into milk in the crock pot and stir once or twice.
5. Put the lid back on your crock pot and wrap the crock pot with a large beach towel or blanket (make sure the crock pot is unplugged and turned off--this helps keep the heat in the crock pot and allows it to cool more slowly).
6. Let sit for 8-12 hours. 
7. Spoon into jars or plastic containers and refrigerate a few hours before eating.

This will keep for 1-2 weeks in your fridge. Be sure to save 1 Tbsp to use as your starter for your next batch of homemade yogurt.

Yields: 2 quarts

Serve with honey and fruit! (This is plain yogurt.)

Hamilton Chili

Sorry, that it has been so long since I have posted, but we are back from vacation, and back in the swing of making new recipes. Before I jump into the recipe I wanted to give Christina a shout out and thank her for being an amazing friend and letting us come to visit them in SF. Hopefully someday we will be back close again. We miss you guys already!

Now, for the Chili!! It is fall so, even here in Texas, we can finally start making some of our favorite comfort foods. We originally got this recipe from a book called "Come Home to dinner", but since then we have made a lot of little changes to make it our own. One of the changes that we have made is to add the kidney and black beans. Ethan and I love lots of different beans, so we added them, but feel free to take them back out if you don't like either kind. Finally, sorry for forgetting to take a pic, but it pretty much looks like every other chili.

Chili

1 lb. Ground Beef
1lb. Sausage, Mild or Spicy both work
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1-28 oz can Diced Tomatos, undrained
1-15 oz can Tomato Sauce
1-15oz can Black Beans, rinsed
1-15 oz can Kidney Beans, rinsed
1-32 oz can Chili/ Pinto Beans, rinsed
2 TBSP Chili Powder
1 1/2 Tsp Ground Cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Toppings:
Shredded Cheese
Sour Cream
Fritos
Corn Bread
This chili is also yum served over rice.

Brown the ground beef and sausage in a skillet, drain grease and add to slow cooker. Rinse all beans and then add to cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients. Let cook for 6-8 hours, on low. As with most chilis, feel free to let this simmer away on low all day!

Crock Pot Italian Chicken

This isn't an amazing picture but I promise it tastes SUPER good :)

4 Chicken Breasts
1/3 cup butter
1 package Italian Seasoning
1/4 cup water

1 8oz package cream cheese
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup

Add first four ingredients into Crock Pot and cook on low for 4 to 5 hours. (Perfect to have cooking during church!)
When chicken is done, take it out and shred it. Put aside.
Add cream cheese and cream of chicken in the Crock Pot and mix well.
Add the chicken and then eat up! I like to eat it on top of rice but you can do mashed potatoes or any sort of pasta as well.

Thank you Bingham family for the yummy recipe!!!

Slow Cooker Parmesan Chicken

Parmesan Chicken

Many of you won’t know this, but my husband, Ethan has been working Sundays for the past year. Finally after a long year of going to church alone, his schedule changed for good and I had my partner next to me for church this week. I was so excited for his first weekend off in over a year that I decided that I wanted to make a super simple Sunday supper. When I think simple, I think slow-cooker, and so I tried this recipe. This was the perfect lazy Sunday recipe! No cooking ahead, just mix, toss it all in and come home to deliciousness!!

If I were going to change anything, I would double the rice, because we didn’t think there was enough rice. The original recipe also calls for 2 cups of Parmesan, but I thought that just sounded like too much. As you can see below, I only used 1 cup of Parmesan and we loved the out-come. Feel free to redouble the Parmesan.

Ingredients:

1 Packet Onion Soup Mix

1 cups, uncooked white rice

1 cup, Parmesan

1 ½ cups Milk

2 cans Cream of Mushroom (One Chicken and one Mushroom also works)

5 boneless, skinless breast

6 Tbsp butter

Pepper to taste

(Warning: I wouldn’t add any salt to this mix. We found that between the onion soup mix, the can soups, and the Parmesan there is just enough salt already! )

Spray Slow-cooker Bowl with non-stick spray. Mix the first six ingredients in a bowl. Place Chicken breasts in the bottom of the slow-cooker. Pour soup mixture over the chicken.

LOW for 8-10 hours

HIGH 4-6 hours. Ours was perfect after 4 ½ hours

Old-Fashioned Chicken & Dumplings

Don't ask me why we decided to make hot soup when it has been over 90 degrees here, but we did. And I am so glad that we did! Even though this recipe was delicious and well-worth it, I won't blame you all for waiting until fall to try this one. The only good thing about making this recipe in the summer is that we got to make use of the Slow-Cooker which doesn't seem to heat up the kitchen at all, and you get a bread without baking int he oven. It's a win, win.

This is one of those slow-cooker recipes that actually turned out as well as the recipe claimed it would. The recipe is from America's Test Kitchen book  "Slow-Cooker Revolution". If you have never tried an America's Test Kitchen recipe you should know that they sometimes take a little more time, but they test the recipes over and over again so that they come out consistently. This is one of those, consistent recipes. Also, for a slow-cooker recipe, this ones takes a little bit of prep, but what I have learned is that a little bit of prep at the beginning of a slow-cooker meal often means better flavor and texture. The veggies in the recipe were cooked to perfection with just a little bite left to them, (I am no fan of mushy veg!) and the chicken was a perfect shredding consistency, and the sauce tasted better than I think any other slow-cooker sauce I've ever tried.

One little note: Ethan and I tend to prefer soup to thick stews, so we will probably be adding another cup of water to thin this stew out next time. Just a warning depending on where you fall int he soup versus stew spectrum. 

STEW INGREDIENTS
2 lbs boneless skinless chicken (we used mixed pieces)
Salt and Pepper
3 Tbsp, Olive oil
2 large onions, minced
3 celery ribs, diced 1/4 inch
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried Thyme
1/3 cup flour
4 1/2 cups low-sodium Chicken Broth (I used 5-6 cups water and 7 bouillon cubes. Next time I think I might even add another cup of water to make it a little more soupy.)
4 carrots, pealed and sliced 1/4 thick
2 Bay leaves
1 cup frozen peas (I forgot these and it was fine without...)
1 1/2 tsp dried parsley

Heat 1 Tbsp oil in skillet and brown chicken on both sides. 5-8 mins. If you are using bouillon cubes like I did, you will probably want to leave the chicken unsalted here because the bouillon cubes have enough salt. Repeat with the rest of the chicken. Place the chick with all of it's juices in the Slow-cooker.

Heat remaining oil over medium-high heat in skillet. Add onions, celery, garlic and thyme and cook until veggies are softened and lightly browned. 8-10 minutes. Stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Whisk in 1 cup of stock (or one bouillon cube and one cup water). Slowly whisk and pick up browned bits off the bottom of the skillet. Smooth out any lumps; transfer to slow-cooker.

Stir in remaining stock, carrots, and bay leaves into slow-cooker. Cover and cook on low until chicken is tender. 4-6 hours.

Transfer chicken to cutting board and shred into bite-size pieces. (I skipped dirtying a board and just shredded the chicken in the cooker.) Discard Bay leaves.

DUMPLINGS INGREDIENTS (half recipe for smaller crock pot)

2 cups flour
1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup whole milk
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Note: Ethan and I have a large slow-cooker, but with all the dumplings the entire top was covered in dumplings. If you have a smaller pot, or don't love dumplings as much I would suggest that you halve the dumpling recipe. 

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Leave out milk and butter to room temperature, or microwave until warm. DO NOT OVERHEAT. Stir milk and butter mixture into dry ingredients until just incorporated and smooth.

Drop golf ball-size dumplings into stew about 1/4 inch between dumplings. Cover and cook until dumplings are doubled in size, 25-35 minutes. Serve.

Recipe from America's Test Kitchen "Slow-Cooker Revolution". The recipes in here are amazing.

Slow Cooker Korean Beef Tacos

Pinterest Recipe #2= Success

3-4 pounds beef roast (I used a trimmed chuck roast)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup soy sauce

1 head garlic, peeled

1/2 onion, diced

1 inch fresh ginger root, peeled and grated (i used 2.2 tsp dried)

2 tablespoons seasoned rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 whole jalapeno, diced (be careful! use gloves!)
**I substituted a jar of the diced green chilis because i don't like handling jalapenos and it turned out well.

Dump everything in the Crockpot and cook for 8-10 hours. I stirred the beef about an hour before dinner and it just fell apart.

We ate the meat as suggested in tacos with tomato and queso fresco and they were really good. We both agreed that this meat would also taste really good over rice, so tonight we are going to have the leftovers over rice.