Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Slow-Cooker New Orleans Red Beans and Rice


Southern Living
Since I don't have many fabulous slow-cooker recipes up my sleeve, I turned to my "slow-cooker" pinterest board to see what inspired me enough to pin and found  a pin for 30 Classic Mardi Gras Recipes, clicked on it and came across very delicious looking New Orleans Red Beans and Rice recipe. I knew this would be perfect for us for dinner and would make enough to share with my frozen dinner club. And I though it was unique, but Jolie beat me with a red beans and rice recipe!

It was really good, but next time if I was home (which I'm often not, since as Amber pointed out the beauty of the slow cooker is letting it work for you while you're away at work) I'd throw in the sausage later so it didn't cook quite so long. And Curtis and I both agreed it would be really good to add some shredded chicken, shrimp and okra... guess we had gumbo on our minds! But the recipe was great as is and hit the spot!

We're currently trying to find a balance of Graham's bed time and cooking and eating dinner at night. Every evening it's the question of do we do Graham's night time routine and then cook and eat late (which can be more relaxing, but I'm usually starving by the time we get to dinner) or try to balance playing with Graham in the evening while we cook and eat? We haven't quite nailed down the perfect formula. Speaking of Graham, when I saw this recipe my plan was to make a small batch for him on the side with no meat... but I forgot. Don't worry, we still fed him.

And when we made this I was obviously raring to eat because I didn't bother breaking out our real camera, just got a quick, not-so-pretty, shot with my cell phone. But I included the pretty image from pinterest (above) so you can envision what it's supposed to look like.

Slow-Cooker New Orleans Red Beans and Rice


Ingredients: 
  • 1 pound dried red beans
  • 7 cups water 
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 3 celery stalks, chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1/2 pound andouille sausage, sliced
  • 3 tablespoons Creole seasoning
  • Hot cooked rice
  • Garnish: sliced green onions


 














Directions: 
  1. Place first 8 ingredients in a 4-quart slow cooker.
  2. Cook, covered, at HIGH 7 hours or until beans are tender. Serve with hot cooked rice. Garnish, if desired and add salt to taste. 
Here's Graham-bo at nine months! He has two teeth, pulls up, opens drawers, cabinets and plays in Murray dog's water dish, so it's a whole new ball game around here!

"Mom, want to see how far I can chuck these pumpkins?"

2 comments:

  1. Oh Emily! I love this post for so many reasons. I remember those times of not knowing when to cook and eat dinner! I thought I'd never lose the baby weight when all I did was gorge myself on food at 9:00 at night! And Graham is so darn cute! can't wait to get my hands on him!

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  2. I'm glad you remembered to feed your baby. lol! Seriously, the next thing on my to-do is to-make red beans and rice! Oh Grahambo, what a muffin...

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