Anyone have good recommendations for slow cooker or pressure cooker recipes? I have been using my instant pot a lot lately and am looking for more things to try. Spicier the better.
What style of food are you trying to make? You can make a lot of things with a slow cooker. I guess let me give you one recipe I like, it's sort of a combination of things I like about American, English, and French braises:
Get a few pounds of beef, sear it on each side in your crock pot, take it out. After chopping to your preference: a medium-large Spanish onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 or 3 stalks of celery, 2-3 medium carrots (or one large carrot). You can just add salt and pepper here (maybe a tsp of paprika), but note that I add herbs halfway through the cooking process. As they begin to soften (not really brown, just soften). Then pour in about a cup of red wine (merlot, cab, sauvignon --something with a good flavor), let it come to a simmer to get rid of some of the alcohol. Put the meat back in, pour up to the top of the meat with beef stock or water (be careful with too much water if you have a wide slow cooker, cut up the meat if you need to). About two hour before you pull it out, put in about 1 tsp of chopped fresh thyme and a scant 1 tsp of minced fresh rosemary. Let that slow cook for a 3-5 hours, just make sure it's not going too, too long. About 40 minutes before it's ready to go, pour in a flour slurry, and let it thicken. Depends on how thick you like things, but I tend to use 1/3 - 1 cup of flour, depending on how much liquid there is.
I eat this on mashed potatoes and mash rutabagas, but you can do a lot with this. If you want, chop up large root vegetables and add them 40 minutes (or however long you like them to be cooked). Potatoes, parsnips, and carrots are good here, but the sky's the limit. Or hell, just eat it as an open-faced sandwich.
Served over mashed potatoes is more classic, but I do rice usually for ease. I didn't like it over egg noddles, they don't soak up any sauce.
