Kale bruschetta gives leftover greens a higher purpose.

Why do leftovers have such a bad reputation? Well, it could be the sloppy way they get reheated, for one. Microwaving isn’t a cooking technique that does any food a favor, with the exception of, perhaps, frozen Hot Pockets (which aren’t very good straight out of the package.)

Even when home cooks attempt to whip up leftovers into something else, it’s often a something else that wouldn’t sound too tempting even if it weren’t made with yesterday’s dinner: hashes, casseroles, anything with the word surprise tacked on. (How much of a surprise can it be when you already had it for dinner yesterday?)

It doesn’t help that a lot of  leftovers may have been left over for a reason. If a meatloaf was only mediocre to begin with, meatloaf hash has nowhere to go but down.

That’s why it’s so exciting to launch a new category on Crock Tease just for using up your crock-pot leftovers. The Not-So-Sloppy Seconds recipes are just as good or even better than the recipes that inspire them, and you’ll want to slow cook up some of the original Crock Tease recipes to have leftovers on purpose for making them.

Slow Cooker Flowering Kale is the base recipe for this distinctly un-run-of-the-mill bruschetta. It combines the peppery bite of kale with a bit of aged Manchego. You’ve heard of the Man of La Mancha? Well, this is the cheese of La Mancha, and its rustic taste blends nicely with the slow-cooked kale.

If you don’t have, or can’t find, Manchego cheese, substitute fresh Parmesan, Romano, Pecorino, or Asiago. (If you can’t find any of those, then stop buying your groceries from the gas station or slap your cheesemonger –whichever applies.)

Bruschetta with Slow-Cooked Kale and Manchego Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup of slow-cooked kale , warmed (either reheated or straight out of the slow cooker if you just made it)
1-2 oz Manchego cheese, grated
1 loaf of crusty bread, sliced
Extra virgin olive oil
Optional: Fresh minced garlic and balsamic vinegar

Directions: Brush each slice of bread with olive oil on both sides. Heat a griddle on top of the stove and grill the bread a few minutes until light brown on bottom, then flip over and top with a few pieces of kale and a sprinkling of Manchego cheese. Grill until cheese is melted, covering with a lid if necessary.

You may wish to add extra garlic and a few drops of balsamic vinegar to taste to your kale before topping, depending on how much seasoning you used in slow-cooking the kale.

See? Leftovers can be even better than the first round. Aren’t you glad it isn’t kale loaf?

Risotto in a slow cooker? Prepare to faint.

Risotto is a simple rice dish at its most basic, but its elaborate cooking procedure requires nano-second timing and perpetual stirring that can wear out even an Incredible Hulk-sized bicep before the rice is even half-cooked.

That may be why restaurants pride themselves on their ability to turn out perfect risotti, and also why Hell’s Kitchen contestants have more trouble cooking a risotto than with any other single dish. While the chefs manage  perfectly-done Beef Wellingtons by the dozens and torch creme brulees shoulder-to-shoulder in the world’s most chaotic kitchen, it’s the rice that brings the contestants to their knees.

I’ve frequently joked that the dumpster behind the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant is probably mostly loaded with trash bags bursting with risotto, as I’ve seen chef Gordon Ramsay dump out pan after pan of the contestants’ poorly cooked rice dishes.

Rice can be tricky in the slow cooker too, but with just a little hands-on work –considerably less than with a traditional risotto, but more than some slow cooker recipes– you can turn out perfectly-textured rice. Part of the trick is to use converted rice (quick-cooking rice), which may irritate purists who insist on Arborio for risotto, but they’ll already be popping a vein that you’re using a crock-pot anyway.

Placate the snobbish by calling it something else: steamed rice should chill them out, but it’s an awfully mundane name for a dish that’s proof that epicurean results can come out of the slow cooker. You could also consider this a sort of sublime tuna casserole, elevated to its highest form.

Whatever you call it, prepare for a creamy-textured rice dish that’s a slow cooker quickie with just an hour of cook time.

Slow Cooker Risotto with Fresh Tuna and Basil Recipe

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp melted butter
2-3 green onions, chopped
3 cups very hot vegetable stock
1 cup uncooked converted rice
1/2 cup white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lb. fresh tuna, cubed
1/4 cup snipped fresh basil

Directions: Combine butter, onions, stock, rice, wine and pepper in the crock of your slow cooker and stir. Cover and cook on high for 45 minutes. Remove lid and stir in tuna, then cook for an additional 15 minutes, or until tuna is just cooked. Turn off the slow cooker and let sit for five minutes. Remove lid and stir in basil. Fluff with a fork and serve immediately. Serves two.

Tuna risotto makes a light supper-in-a-bowl for two, or you can serve it to four as a starter or side dish.

Perhaps someday you’ll be a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen. I can’t wait to see the string of curses Chef Ramsay unleashes when you produce your crock-pot. But the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the risotto.

But I rarely think of the artichoke in its entirety, and I even more rarely think about its family. The artichoke, you see, is a thistle. Thistles are prickly plants with sharp surfaces to counter-attack hungry herbivores (like us.)

The artichoke is an edible thistle, but if we didn’t slice off those prickly points from the bud portion and eat it, it would grow into a spectacular purple flower. Perhaps that’s the reason for the flesh-wounding tips: a gift as precious as the one inside each artichoke bud –whether it becomes a lovely bloom or a meal for you to savor– is one well worth protecting.

An artichoke in full bloom. (Cat Dancing/Creative Commons License)

That’s why I wanted to concoct a slow cooker recipe that glorifies the artichoke instead of strangling it in cheese or butter, like Americans are so often apt to do. In Spain they know how to treat an artichoke, sauteeing them simply with a dab of garlic, or sprinkling the young ones lightly with olive oil and leaving them to roast slowly in the ashes of a fire.

This slow cooker chicken dish is lightly seasoned, with just enough herbs, white wine, and olive oil to bring out the taste of the artichokes themselves.

Chicken and artichokes, simply seasoned.

Slow Cooker Chicken with Artichokes Recipe

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts
3 cups artichoke hearts, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup kalamata olives (about 12)
3 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
1 tsp herbes de Provence
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine or dry vermouth
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 Tsp olive oil

Directions: Arrange chicken breasts and artichokes in the crock of your slow cooker. Top with kalamata olives and sprinkle with herbs and garlic. Pour wet ingredients over the top, drizzling the olive oil last, and stir just a little to combine ingredients if necessary. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or high for 3-4 hours, until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with a Greek salad, or a simple green salad sprinkled with feta, and warm pita bread.

Keep in kind that the thistle is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility, and the wounding of one demands punishment. If anyone lifts the lid of your slow cooker while you cook your artichokes, feel free to mete out that punishment in the name of the Order of the Thistle.

Slow cooking makes the sweet peppers deliciously tender.

What is it that makes us culinary types –or even just eating types– so fascinated with stuffing things inside of other things? From our turkeys to our donuts, we love the idea of food with a filling. In the fifties, it was cottage cheese spilling out of a tomato half at the diner. Today, it’s Paula Deen seeing how many creatures she can stuff inside of other creature’s cavities and calling it Turducken.

Ms. Deen has actually done nothing new. The stuffing of birds into other birds is a musty old tradition that reached comical proportions two hundred years ago as the extravagant rich tried to outdo one another. At one royal feast in France in the early 1800s, the guests enjoyed a combined total of 17 birds, stuffed inside one another and packed as tight as a clown car.

The Roti sans Pareil (Roast without Equal) consisted of a large bustard, into which were stuffed a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, a bunting, then a warbler. The tiny final songbird was stuffed with a single olive.

I suppose Paula Deen would call it a busturgoophenduckfowl-teacockploverwingquail-thrushlarkbuntingler (which is mighty fun to sound out slowly, especially the “cockplover” and “bun-tingler” parts.) Seeing as how a large number of these unlucky birds are on the endangered list, it would be best not to try and replicate it.

Instead, how about stuffing something a little more sane, like sweet peppers? The taste of the colorful peppers is less bitter and more sweet than green peppers, and in the slow cooker they become deliciously fork-tender. The couscous stuffing is a melange of subtle seasonings and crunchy nuts.

Serve as a vegetarian main course, or as an unexpected side with garlic roast chicken.

Couscous-stuffed peppers on the side with garlic-encrusted chicken.

Slow Cooker Stuffed Sweet Peppers Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups uncooked couscous
2 cups vegetable broth
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup golden raisins or currants
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 red, yellow and/or orange bell peppers

Directions:

Combine all ingredients except peppers in a large bowl and stir to combine. Parboil peppers for about 3 minutes to soften and let cool. Remove stems from peppers. Slice in half vertically and remove seeds and pith. Pare down edges of peppers if necessary to make them even, and save parings for garnish. Fill peppers with couscous mixture, packing it down with the back of a spoon to hold more couscous.

Fill crock of your slow cooker with 3/4 cup hot water, then arrange peppers in the bottom. Cover and cook 2-3 hours on high or 4-6 hours on low, until peppers are tender. Lift carefully with a large slotted spoon and serve.

Tips: You can skip the parboiling if you’d like to save a step before slow cooking, but softening the peppers first makes them easier to fill, as well as making them easier to arrange in the crockpot (the pliability helps them conform to any configuration).

This recipe will likely leave you with some extra couscous mixture, which is a good thing. You can serve it by itself to those who don’t like peppers, or save it for tomorrow’s leftovers. It’s pleasing on its own.

Next time you get the urge to stuff something, make it a pepper. Besides, where would you buy a bustard anyway?

Savory slow cooker white bean soup.

“What should I make in the slow cooker?” I asked the fiance.

“Soup.”

He didn’t even look up or hesitate. And he was right. I’ve teased soup out of the old Rival crockpot dozens and dozens of times, from chunky seafood chowders to creamy pumpkin purees, but I haven’t done it in a good, long time.

I realized that I’ve become so enamored of all the unusual and surprising things that can be done with a slow cooker, that I lost my grip on the things it does best. There are two: soup and dried beans. It was high time I did both for Crock Tease, and all in one recipe, to show off the crockpot at its best.

Following on the heels of the previous night’s party , soup sounded like a wonderful hangover cure as well. Steamy broth beats hair of the dog hands down, no matter what anyone tells you. It even slightly beats Water Joe, the brilliant caffeinated water product I once proclaimed the world’s greatest hangover drink. (You know how you can’t decide which you need more, water or coffee, so you alternately guzzle both? Water Joe is both. It has sadly disappeared from the store where I once bought it.)

There are a lot of slow cooker bean recipes that involve opening cans, and that’s okay. Sometimes convenience rules. Do yourself a favor and cook the real deal once in a while, though. The slow cooker does the tough work, it’s cheaper, lower in sodium, and –most importantly– slow cooked beans taste ten times better. Making the soup right in the pot in which the dried beans cook takes advantage of the flavorsome juice that lingers in the crock (known as “bean liquor”).

Top each bowl with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, shaved Parmesan and cracked pepper and the soup will look fine Italian restaurant-quality. Eat as a meal, or serve as a sophisticated starter to an Italian dinner.

Slow Cooker Italian Herb White Bean Soup Recipe

1 lb. dried white beans (Great Northern or Cannellini)
6 cups vegetable broth (about 3 cans)
2 cups water
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 green onions, chopped
3/4 cup roasted red peppers, sliced
1 Tbsp fresh thyme (1 tsp dried)
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary (1 tsp dried)
Juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 Tbsp)
Salt and coarse ground black pepper to taste

For topping: Coarse ground black pepper, olive oil, shaved Parmesan

Directions: Combine ingredients in crock of your slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours or high for 3½-4 hours. To serve, drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over each bowl, then top with shaved Parmesan and black pepper to taste.

Tips: Depending on how hot your slow cooker gets (or how many times you sneak a peak and lose moisture), you might need extra liquid to make your soup soupy. Just add extra broth or water as needed –and stop peeking!

Best hangover cure ever. Have you heard? Bean soup is the new Water Joe.

The hearty-yet-decadent Chicken Chasseur

Some of the dishes that have been around the block are classics for a reason, and they continue to impress generation after generation. A case in point is Chicken Chasseur, which may be one of the oldest recipes on record, dating back to the year 1300 when it was recorded in a manuscript along with other general knowledge.

The Medieval version was called “Chicken Hunter Style,” and it called for a freshly roasted hen to be boiled with garlic, broth, wine, lard, and gizzards. Today we (thankfully) hold the lard and the gizzards, opting instead to use butter and herbs for flavor, but we still drool over Chicken Chasseur (chasseur is French for “hunter.”)

Today’s version is an earthy dish with ingredients that still evoke the forest that was the hunter’s domain: fresh poultry, field mushrooms, just-picked herbs. Slowly simmered in wine and garlic, the flavors are primevally rustic, yet decadently French.

To adapt Chicken Chasseur for the slow cooker, I lowered the traditional amount of liquid and slightly upped the flour. Slow cooking keeps in the moisture and doesn’t allow for evaporation, so the reduction of the sauce has to be rigged. Starting with a thicker base means the sauce will have the consistency of a reduction without the hassle of pan-reducing.

Slow Cooker Chicken Chasseur Recipe

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small red onion, chopped
3/4 cup chicken broth
6 tbsp. white wine or vermouth
1 tbsp. flour
salt and pepper
1 cup diced tomatoes, well drained
1 tbsp. fresh thyme (or 1 tsp. dried)
12 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced

Directions: Melt butter in a large skillet, then add chicken breasts and sear on each side until lightly browned, about five minutes on each side. Remove chicken and set aside. Add garlic and onions to pan and cook for a few minutes, just until softened; turn off heat. In the crock of your slow cooker, whisk together broth, wine, flour, salt, and pepper until well blended. Stir in the contents of the saute pan, including any remaining  butter. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

Lay the chicken breasts on top of the mixture and cook on low for 2-3 hours or high for 1-1 1/2 hours, until chicken is cooked through. Remove the lid about 20 minutes before serving if you would like to further reduce the sauce.

Tips: If you’re pressed for time, you can add all the ingredients to the pot without searing the chicken or softening the veggies first. You will sacrifice a dab of consistency, and you’ll need to be sure the onions are on the bottom so they’ll cook well.

Guzzled up all the white wine? Use vermouth, which you might be more likely to just have around as a holdover from last month’s martini party.

To make the getting-on-the-table even quicker, serve with rustic bread and a salad-in-a-bag of mixed field greens.

I served my Chicken Chasseur with skin-on, roughly mashed potatoes with fresh sage, to keep the theme provincial. Hunks of bread are in order to sop up the sauce, which is the highlight of the dish. You’ll want to save any leftover mushroom mixture to heat up and serve on toast tomorrow (Perhaps with a smidge of goat cheese? Hmmmmm.)

Just look at that wine-y, buttery juice!