Crockpot Cooking Topic Of Lunch Presentation

Natalie Ferguson-Spray, with the Mahaska County Extension Office, presents a lunch time discussion on crockpot cooking.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – It’s something that everyone seems to be short of these days, extra time. With that in mind, Natalie Ferguson-Spray with the Mahaska County Extension Office developed a lunch time program covering crockpot cooking.

Many times these appliances sit idle on a counter top, or stored away in the back of some cupboard, only to see use a few times a year at most, but Spray believes there are possibilities with the cooking style to help us find those valuable, extra family-time minutes in a day.

Spray also believes that offering these types of lunch time learning options helps to bring in new people to the extension offIce, “to see what we’re about,” Spray says.

The program was something Spray developed on her own, outside of the normal ISU Extension programs. “I was nervous about doing that, because Extension is about researched based learning opportunities and so it was very important to me that when I put this presentation together that I made sure there’s research based information,” Spray said.

Spray says she learned a lot about the crockpot while doing research for the presentation. “It was really fun. I think people think of cooking in the kitchen as having to take a really long time, and maybe we don’t often involve our children a lot. My daughter and I had so much fun.”

“There’s a lot of things you can do to make it convenient for how much time you have,” Spray says. Preparing the ingredients over the weekend, and having the meals in the freezer ready for use during the week in crockpot meals is one of those ways.

Spray says that there are “tons of recipes out there,” but the challenge for her was to also eat and cook healthy. “I wanted folks to see that a crockpot can be healthy and it can taste good.”

There was some success while trying out crockpot recipes for the program, “I had a few not so much,” Spray says with a smile. Orange chicken was one of those successes she found while trying the new recipes. Spray says that it’s different than the oriental version served in restaurant, that is breaded and fried and contains large amounts of sodium. “This recipe was so delicious,” Spray says. I will include it at the end of this column.

After all of the experiments, Spray says she does indeed use her crockpot more now than before. “I had to learn how to be excited about my crockpot because I typically thought of crockpot cooking as starchy meals. Heavy meals like stews, and I’m just not into that.”

Spray says a perfect way to start using your crockpot is by using it to turn the cheaper cuts of meat into things like pulled pork or beef. She said that because those cuts might not taste as good as the more expensive cuts, utilizing the crockpot allows a person to help make those cuts taste better.

Spray is planning a new lunch time program in the near future covering freezer meals. If you would like to know more, visit the Mahaska County Extension online at http://www.extension.iastate.edu/mahaska/ or email Spray at sprayn@iastate.edu

Orange Chicken

IN THE BAG- 2 cups carrots, 2 cups bell peppers, 1 lb. cubed boneless; skinless chicken breast, 3 cloves garlic, 1 t salt, 1/2 t pepper, 8 oz. orange/pineapple juice concentrate.

TO COOK- Cook on low in crock pot; 4-6 hours

TO SERVE- Garnish with Clementine slices (about 4) or mandarin oranges and green onions. Serve on rice with stir fried veggies