Tag Archives: slow cooker

Slow Cooker Mushroom Bourguignon | Vegan

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A vegan version of the classic French Bourguignon; slow cooked whole mushrooms, full of flavour, in a rich red wine sauce.Slow Cooker Vegan Mushroom Bourguignon | via @TheTofuDiariesFrench food isn’t especially known for being vegetarian or vegan friendly, but many casseroles and stews are easily adapted with a little imagination. By slow cooking this dish the flavours can develop and the whole mushrooms soak up the rich flavours of the red wine, thyme and bay leaf. Slow Cooker Vegan Mushroom Bourguignon | via @TheTofuDiariesSlow Cooker Vegan Mushroom Bourguignon | via @TheTofuDiariesSlow Cooker Vegan Mushroom Bourguignon | via @TheTofuDiaries

Ingredients:

300g whole closed cup mushrooms, cleaned

300g whole mini Portobello mushrooms, cleaned

1 onion, sliced

3 carrots, sliced into rounds

2tbsp olive oil

1tbsp dairy-free margarine

2 tbsp plain flour

3 cloves garlic, crushed

500ml vegetable stock

250ml red wine

1tsp smoked paprika

1/2tsp thyme

1/2tsp black pepper

1 bay leaf

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a lidded saucepan (or the slow cooker insert, if possible) on the hob over a medium high heat. Add the onion and carrots, then cover with the lid and sauté for around ten minutes until they have softened.

2. Add the garlic and dairy-free margarine into the pan. Stir for a minute or two until the margarine has melted. Add the flour and mix well. Place this and all of the remaining ingredients into the slow cooker.

3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Remove the bay leaf and serve with rice or crusty bread.Slow Cooker Vegan Mushroom Bourguignon | via @TheTofuDiariesNext month I’m heading to Montpellier and really hope to be able to find some French cuisine I can try (other than bread and cheese that is!) I’d love to hear if anyone has any tips for the city!

Smoky Slow Cooker Tempeh with Sweet Potato & Green Beans | Vegan

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A smoky slow cooked dish of wholesome tempeh, chunky sweet potato and green beans. Ideal served up with brown rice or fresh crusty bread.

Made from cooked, fermented soya beans and originating from Indonesia, Tempeh packs a nutritional punch. With more protein than tofu since it uses the whole bean and high in fibre, calcium, and iron, tempeh is ideal for vegetarian and vegan cooking. What distinguishes tempeh from tofu, you may ask? Where tofu is made from the curds of the bean, tempeh is formed from the whole bean – hence the greater health benefits.

Tempeh is an ingredient I don’t have a great deal of experience with – I used it probably a decade ago now, didn’t really like whatever it was that I made with it (I can’t remember at all), then never used it again. I’ve been wanting to give it another go for a while now ever since having sampling some in an amazing dish at a veggie restaurant in Dubrovnik last year. It took me a while to decide what to make with it – tempeh “bacon” is often raved about – but I opted to use it in the slow cooker.

Usually found in a solid block or sold in thick slices, tempeh keeps its shape and texture well in the slow cooker. It does have a fairly strong taste of its own, but apparently you can steam tempeh prior to cooking to remove some of these more bitter elements of its taste and I will definitely be giving this a go next time I cook with it. You can optionally include this step in the recipe here and steam for ten minutes prior to the browning step, either in a steamer if you have one or cheat by simmering in a very shallow amount of water.

Smokey Slow Cooker Tempeh | The Tofu DiariesSmokey Slow Cooker Tempeh 2Ingredients:

500g Tempeh, cut into thick slices

600g Sweet potatoes

200g green beans

2 red onions, cut into eights

4 cloves garlic, crushed

3tbsp olive oil

2tbsp tomato purée

2tsp smoked paprika

1tsp ground cumin

250ml vegetable stock

1tbsp Henderson’s Relish (or vegetarian Worcester sauce)

Plenty of black pepper

  1. Heat two tablespoons of the olive oil in a pan, or the slow cooker insert (if suitable), over a medium heat. Add the onions, garlic and spices and fry for a few minutes until the onions begin to soften.
  2. Removed the onion mix from the pan and place to one side. Add the remaining olive oil to the still-hot pan (without washing the pan – you want to retain any leftover spices). Once hot, add the tempeh.
  3. Cook the tempeh for approximately ten minutes until it is browned on each side.
  4. Return the onions to the pan, along with all other remaining ingredients. Mix well and transfer to the slow cooker – it is important to do it this way round so that the flavours from the pan are transferred to the final dish.
  5. Cook on high for four hours or low for eight to ten hours.

Smokey Slow Cooker Tempeh 4Have you ever cooked with tempeh? What is your favourite way of cooking it?

Sweet Potato & 3-Bean Slow Cooker Paprikash | Vegan

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This Hungarian dish brings the warm flavours of paprika & cayenne pepper and is packed full with seven different types of vegetable.

According to recent research an ideal diet is made up of seven portions of fruit and veg a day – two more than current UK government guidelines. This research suggests that adding this extra nutrition cuts down the likelihood of dying from cancer or heart disease. Vegetarian diets have frequently been linked to lower incidences of these sorts of illness and that could be due to the consumption of higher amounts of vegetables.

Even in a vegetable-rich vegetarian or vegan diet, it is always possible to pack in that bit more and today’s recipe is an ideal go-to when you really want to fill up on a variety of vegetables. The beans in this dish bring added protein, whilst the lentils provide extra fibre and heart-loving magnesium. Well, if that wasn’t enough there’s even a touch of marmite to add all-important B-vitamins. All of the ingredients in this dish are simply added to the slow cooker together negating the need for any added oil.Vegan Slow Cooker Paprikash | The Tofu Diaries Slow Cooker Paprikash 2 Slow Cooker Paprikash 3

Ingredients:

2 medium-sized sweet potatoes cut into 1 inch chunks

250g red lentils

2 red onions, each cut into 16

1 can kidney beans, drained

1 can butter beans, drained

1 can black eyed beans, drained

2 cans/800g chopped tomatoes

150ml veg stock

1tsp marmite

4 cloves garlic

2tbsp Hungarian paprika

2tsp cayenne pepper

Plenty of black pepper

  1. Add all of the ingredients to the slow cooker. Mix well. Cook for five hours on high or ten hours on low.
  2. Serve with an extra sprinkling of black pepper and crusty bread or rice.

Slow Cooker Paprikash 4Slow Cooker Paprikash 5This recipe is part of Farmersgirl Kitchen’s April slow cooker challenge to make a dish in your slow cooker that contains seven portions of fruit and/or veg. Find out more and how to get involved here.SlowCookerChallenge-Logo

Do you think seven portions of fruit and veg a day is realistic? Share your thoughts below or over on !

Slow Cooker Vietnamese Caramel Tofu & Carrots

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Another recipe roughly adapted and turned veggie from slow cooker cookbook, this dish is a treat of a main course. Both sweet and aromatic, tofu is ideal as it absorbs the flavours beautifully. Serving it with fresh coriander, pickled bean sprouts and rice balances the dish and stops it being too sweet (which it might be if eaten on its own). I made this one Saturday and had it cook through the day ready to be eaten that evening.

It’s essential to press the tofu before using it in this dish. To do so, simply drain the block, wrap well with kitchen roll, and place a heavy cookbook or pan on top. Leave this for at least ten minutes but ideally around an hour. Unwrap and it’s ready to use. By removing more of the liquid, this makes the tofu firmer so it will keep its shape in the slow cooker.

This recipe used Chantenay carrots but regular carrots cut into rounds or batons would work just as well. It’s also worth nothing that the colour of the dish depends somewhat on the type of soy sauce you use – I used a particularly dark one in this that turns every dish very very dark!Vietnamese Caramel Tofu | The Tofu Diaries

Vietnamese Caramel Tofu 2 Vietnamese Caramel Tofu 3Ingredients

400g tofu, drained, pressed & cut into large cubes

1 white onion, sliced

200g Chantenay carrots, cut into halves lengthways

200g fine green beans

1 lemongrass stalk, bruised & cut in half

Fresh coriander to serve

For the sauce:

150g light muscovado sugar

2tbsp water

1tsp dark soy sauce

Juice of lime

For the beansprouts:

Handful fresh beansprouts

1tbsp rice wine vinegar

Chili flakes

To create the caramel sauce, heat the sugar and water over a medium heat – for best results use a stainless steel pan so you can gauge the colour better. Stir well until the sugar has fully dissolved. Turn the heat up high, without stirring, so the sugar boils and turns a golden brown colour without burning. Remove from the heat and add the soy sauce and lime juice – do this immediately as it halts the cooking process.

Put all of the ingredients into the slow cooker and pour over the caramel sauce. Cook on low for eight hours. If possible, stir halfway. Once it is cooked, transfer to the hob and cook on a high heat for a few minutes to allow the sauce to thicken. Remove the lemongrass. Sprinkle with fresh coriander leaves, top with a scoop of the pickled beansprouts, and serve with rice.

For the pickled beansprouts, simply coat them in the vinegar and chilli flakes and leave to stand for around twenty minutes for the vinegar to absorb. Drain and they are ready to use.Vietnamese Caramel Tofu 4 Vietnamese Caramel Tofu 5Have you ever cooked tofu in a slow cooker? Any tips or tricks to share?

Slow Cooker Vegan Iraqi Daube

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Trying a new cuisine is always exciting and exploring lesser known countries – or at least, lesser known for their food – can introduce you to unexplored ingredients and exciting new flavours. I was taking a look in my boyfriend’s slow cooker cookbook () for inspiration, nosing at meat recipes I could adapt, when I came across a recipe for Iraqi beef daube. Inspired by the recipe I found, I have reworked their original into a vegan alternative. For this recipe I had to seek out dried limes (sometihng I have never cooked with before) and finally got to use some all spice I picked up a few weeks ago.

The history of Iraqi food is as rich as its flavours, with thousands of years, past empires and neighbouring countries having made their mark on the food we see today. In fact, the very first cookbooks are said to have been found in Iraq on ancient stone tablets. Despite all of these influences coming together, I can honestly say this dish tasted like nothing I have ever eaten before and I can’t wait to make it again!

The daube is a hearty dish that uses no oil or other fats in the stew. This recipe is a far stretch from the one I found in the cookbook, with an array of vegetables in place of brisket, and the addition of Marmite to create a depth of flavour that complements the rich tomato base. The method for today’s dish is very simple as everything for the stew simply cooks together in the slow cooker and is ideal to serve up with a buttery saffron rice (I used a dairy-free spread) and tangy caramelised barberries. The method for the barberries here is borrowed from one element of this recipe by the lovely Goli who has a whole blog of Persian dishes just waiting to be adapted into veggie ones!Slow Cooker Vegan Iraqi Daube | The Tofu DiariesIraqi Daube 4Iraqi Daube 2 Ingredients

For the daube:

2 white onions, cut into eights

300g mushrooms, cut into halves

2 celery sticks, sliced

1 courgette, thickly sliced

1 large sweet potato, cut into large chunks

Handful of broccoli, in small florets

Handful of fine green beans

2x 500ml cartons of passata

125ml veg stock

2 heaped tsps Marmite

6 cloves garlic, sliced

2 dried limes, make a slit on one side of each

½tsp ground all spice

1 cinnamon stick

Fresh coriander to serve

For the rice:

Saffron rice (50g per person)

Handful of dried barberries, well washed

½tbsp vegetable oil

1tsp sugar

½tbsp water

Place all of the ingredients into the slow cooker and cook on high for five hours or on low for ten hours. Once ready, remove the cinnamon stick and dried limes. Sprinkle on the fresh coriander leaves.

Serve with saffron rice (method here, substituting dairy-free spread in place of butter) topped with the barberries. To prepare the barberries, cook the washed berries, oil, sugar and water on a medium heat, stirring well until the berries have darkened and softened.Iraqi Daube 1Iraqi Daube 3

Have you tried any new cuisines lately?