A slow-cooked 'speriment

It will not surprise most people that my first post is a food post. It might, however, be surprising that it is cooking rather than baking...but today I had a win I just had to share!

I love my slow cooker, even though I don't exploit its use nearly as much as I could. The amazing meats and casseroles I get out of it completely justify its existence for me! Usually one day of the weekend is reserved for slow cooking (and occasionally a weekday or two as well). You can convert almost any casserole or roast recipe to a slow cooker by reducing the liquids involved to about 2/3. Most red meats and chicken can be slow cooked for between 8-10 hours. I try to make it to the 9 hour mark, if I can stand the mouth-watering aromas it creates for that long.

Yesterday (in my effort to clear the freezer before we leave for home in 23 days :0 ), I defrosted a pack of diced chuck steak (700g). This is what I love about slow cooking - meat that you wouldn't eat alone or cooked up on a grill/in a pan can be slow cooked and become amazing. Just be careful that the amount of fat in the meat isn't too high, as you can create a pretty fatty, oily mess if there is too much (and by 'too much' I mean slabs of thick, white fat - marbling is usually okay).

This morning at about 10:30 (when I remembered that I had defrosted the meat), I threw the beef in the slow cooker, along with...

3/4 cup of beef stock
1/4 cup red wine (it may have been slightly more than that...ha ha)
1 diced onion
200g tinned diced tomatoes, drained
1 clove garlic, crushed
cracked pepper

...and turned it on low. I know most recipes call for the meat to be pre-browned, but to be perfectly honest, I am lazy, and at that time of the morning, I do not want to smell meat frying. Nor do I want to wash the extra pot. And because I aim for the extra hour or so, I have never noticed much of a difference. I do brown the meat if I am doing a whole roast, which seems to prevent it just breaking up in the pot.

I usually serve slow cooked casseroles with roast/mashed potatoes, Yorkshire puddings or couscous. When browsing other slow cooked dishes, I came across a whole slew of casserole recipes with dumplings. I have cooked and baked my way through many interesting (sometimes interesting for the wrong reasons!) dishes, but I had never attempted dumplings. Cue end-of-semester experiment time!

All the recipes I found for dumplings were attached to a casserole of some kind, and for good reason - I soon realised that you were supposed to bake the dumplings on top of the casserole for the last 20 minutes in the oven. Well, my casserole was in a slow cooker...but it was covered, so surely it would still work?

I made my dumplings like so (to serve 2 of us - and we had leftovers):

3/4 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup plain flour (which turned out not to be enough - I gradually added more as I mixed the dumplings, and it would have wound up between 1/3 to 1/2 cup to make a soft dough, not too sticky)
30g butter, melted
1/3 cup milk
freshly ground pepper
a generous shake of dried oregano

Sift the flours into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the seasonings and liquid ingredients, then mix to form a soft dough. Divide into 6 even portions and roll into balls.

The recipes I came across said to bake them on top of the casserole in the oven for 20-25 mins. Typically, recipes get tripled in time when converting from the oven to the slow cooker, so I put my dumplings on top...

...and cooked them for the last hour that the casserole was in.

Within about 10 minutes, they doubled in size, and given I had planned to run to the store while they were cooking, I was concerned I would have some kind of oozy mess to deal with afterwards. But, to my amazement, I arrived home at 7:30, 9 hours after starting the casserole and 1 hour after putting in the dumplings, to this:

And they were fabulous! Not every experiment of mine goes to plan, and I was a little concerned that I might ruin the whole casserole in the process. But this one was a winner! The Maestro ate four of them!

The best part about them is that they use very cheap ingredients and are very filling, so if you are cooking on a budget, this is the best way to make the meat go a loooong way. We had much more casserole left over than we normally would. I also served this with green beans and broccoli.

Now you know you can make dumplings in a slow cooker. Hooray! Just in time for Aussie winter!