Yahoo Lifestyle 27 Easy, Healthy Crock Pot Recipes
Convenience, flavor, and healthy ingredients — it's impossible for the three to co-exist, right? Wrong. It's possible in a Crock Pot!
A slow cooker is a beautiful thing. Just give it a few hours, and it'll tease out flavors, blend seasonings, and tenderize the most stubborn or cheap cuts of meat. Ahead is a collection of easy and healthy Crock Pot recipes that might just become your new favorites. From vegan lasagnas and beef and broccoli, to butternut squash soup and steak fajitas, we've got your dinner covered.
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1.Slow Cooker Chicken Fajitas
This tasty fajitas recipe might yield a bit of excess liquid. You can prevent a sloppy mess by draining the tomatoes, serving the chicken with a slotted spoon, and maybe enjoying the last bit of chicken over a bed of rice.
Recipe: Slow Cooker Chicken Fajitas | Shop This Recipe
2.Healthy Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Dip
Whether you enjoy it as a snack or as a full-on meal, you can't go wrong with this buffalo chicken dip that pairs chicken with protein-packed Greek yogurt and two kinds of low-fat cheese. If you have some pita bread on hand, cut them into triangles and bake them in the oven for five minutes at 425°F for quick dipping pita chips.
Recipe: Healthy Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Dip | Shop This Recipe
3.Slow Cooker Beef and Broccoli
If you worship at the church of sweet and savory, then I don't need to tell you why combining sugar, soy sauce, and beef broth is a foolproof recipe for irresistible taste. Sirloin and broccoli make this a meal, but let's be real — essentially any protein or vegetable would pair well with this sauce.
4.Slow Cooker Vegan Butternut Squash Mac
I'm a huge fan of dairy, but I have to admit that this vegan butternut squash mac is absolute creamy perfection. You don't have to look far down the ingredients list to see what the literal secret sauce is: a teaspoon of mustard (along with some nutritional yeast and cashews).
Recipe: Slow Cooker Vegan Butternut Squash Mac | Shop This Recipe
5.Veggie Breakfast Casserole
Tired of overnight oats or toast for breakfast? Try this breakfast casserole, which combines eggs with all the best vegetables, including sweet potatoes and mushrooms. It's a hit with vegetarians and omnivores alike!
Recipe: Veggie Breakfast Casserole | Shop This Recipe
6.Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken
Crock Pots were basically made for recipes like this one. Cooking the chicken thighs over an extended period of time draws out the flavor, helps tenderize the meat and infuses everything with a rich blend of garlic and balsamic.
Recipe: Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken | Shop This Recipe
7.Slow-Cooker Roasted Tomato Basil Soup
You can call it a healthy slow cooker recipe, I call it my favorite soothing recipe after a long day of strategically nodding my head in agreement in Zoom calls.
Recipe: Slow-Cooker Roasted Tomato Basil Soup | Shop This Recipe
8.Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup
Trying to cook a creamy soup on the stovetop can be a tedious process for anyone who doesn't have the time to monitor a pot. This butternut squash soup recipe lets the Crock Pot do the work for you (after 30 minutes of roasting), and results in a velvety soup you'll want to savor.
Recipe: Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup | Shop This Recipe
9.Vegan Bolognese
Some of the best vegan recipes in the world aren't simply "meat-free" versions of their omnivorous counterparts, but completely reimagined iterations. That's the case with this vegan bolognese, which uses the textural power of shredded carrots, eggplant chunks, and cauliflower florets to give both depth of flavor and satisfying chewiness.
Recipe: Vegan Bolognese
10.Slow-Cooker Steak Fajitas
Crock pots are great at cooking white meat, but excellent at cooking red meat until it's buttery soft and juicy. Try it with this steak fajitas recipe, which you can enjoy on corn or flour tortillas, or just a scoop of rice.
Recipe: Slow-Cooker Steak Fajitas | Shop This Recipe
11.Chicken Tortilla Bowl Soup
The homemade tortilla bowl is perfect for this soup, but if you don't have the oil — or the pain tolerance for deep-frying a large tortilla into a bowl — then you can also just crush up a bunch of tortilla chips into your bowl of soup, or bake a tortilla in between two bowls in the oven.
Recipe: Chicken Tortilla Bowl Soup | Shop This Recipe
12.Slow-Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken
To get that finger-licking, sticky texture, try adding just a pinch of cornstarch to thicken up your sauce. Garnish with a sprinkling of sesame seeds and sliced green onions, and you have yourself a restaurant-worthy meal!
13.Spicy White Bean Chili
Mild, nutty, and creamy, white beans are a versatile ingredient that do a great job of integrating seamlessly with other flavors. Here, the result is a rich chili with a slightly sweet, mildly spicy burn.
Recipe: Spicy White Bean Chili | Shop This Recipe
14.Apple Cinnamon Steel-Cut Oatmeal
Look, Crock Pots aren't exclusive to lunch or dinner recipes — they're great for breakfast, too. Take this oatmeal recipe: If you follow it right, you'll get the world's creamiest bowl of old-fashioned homemade oats. Top them with a handful of apple slices, and you're pretty much guaranteed the perfect day.
15.Protein Packed Chili
Everyone knows that the best chilis take time for all the flavors to blend together (otherwise you'd just be eating bean soup). Save this slow cooker recipe for a chill afternoon when you can dump all the ingredients in and spend the rest of the day fantasizing about your upcoming dinner.
Recipe: Protein Packed Chili | Shop This Recipe
16.Hearty Veggie Soup
On days you need a boost of vitamins (or simply want to clean out the wilting vegetables in your fridge, ahem), try out this recipe, which combines a ton of sliced vegetables — including squash, celery, tomatoes, zucchini, and onion — into a light soup you can polish off with a piece of crusty bread.
Recipe: Hearty Veggie Soup | Shop This Recipe
17.Freezer Prep Honey Soy Chicken
Craving Chinese-American food? Try out this recipe, which slow-cooks a blissfully sticky honey soy chicken in less than three hours — basically how long it would've taken you to choose your order and wait for your delivery to arrive, anyway.
18.Chicken Fajitas
If you're like me and are always craving some variation of fajitas, then you'll love this freezer-friendly recipe that you can make in bulk. When you're getting closer to dinner time, just pour the contents into your Crock Pot and cook it on high for three hours or on low for six.
Recipe: Chicken Fajitas | Shop This Recipe
19.Healthy Slow Cooker Spinach Artichoke Dip
For optimal creaminess, drain or dry off as much of the water on the spinach as possible.
Recipe: Healthy Slow Cooker Spinach Artichoke Dip | Shop This Recipe
20.Slow-Cooker Thai Green Curry
You don't need too many ingredients to make this green curry that's so good you should basically charge money for it — just coconut milk, curry paste, chicken, and two of your favorite veggies.
Recipe: Slow-Cooker Thai Green Curry | Shop This Recipe
21.Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken
This simple slow cooker recipe is so basic, yet so flavorful, that you'll start feeling like your Crock Pot is a magic cauldron. Just throw in some chicken thighs, herbs, lemon, and garlic, and voilà — you have the centerpiece to a dinner your family will inhale before you even have a chance to sit down.
22.Slow Cooker Stuffed Peppers
Stuffed peppers are only as good as the ingredients they're actually stuffed with. You could be eating this cheesy rice, corn, and bean combo out of your friend's discarded ramen cup, and it would still be irresistible. The peppers do elevate the whole eating experience, though. 😉
Recipe: Slow Cooker Stuffed Peppers | Shop This Recipe
23.Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken Tacos
You only need to wait four hours until you can fall in love with your new favorite dinner recipe. It's tender, it's juicy, it's five ingredients, and it's definitely making me salivate right now.
Recipe: Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken Tacos | Shop This Recipe
24.Slow Cooker Jackfruit Carnitas
While the Western world is still catching on to the culinary wonders of jackfruit, it's actually been a popular ingredient in South Asian cuisine for a long time. For those of you not in the know, jackfruit is an actual fruit that, when cooked, has a texture resembling that of pulled pork. It's also mild enough that it'll absorb the flavors of the other ingredients it's cooked with — producing a wildly rich and tasty dish, just like these carnitas.
25.Creamy Cauliflower Soup
One head of cauliflower + cream + potatoes = a velvety soup that you could only make happen with the help of your Crock Pot. Top with bacon bits, cheddar, green onion, or even some fried onion for an added crunch.
Recipe: Creamy Cauliflower Soup
26.Greek Green Beans
They're crunchy, they're green, and they're versatile. Whatever the reason, there's something about green beans that makes them my favorite vegetable. Try them out a lá this Greek green beans recipe and maybe you'll join the fan club.
Recipe: Greek Green Beans
27.Pumpkin Lasagna
Where has this vegan lasagna recipe been all my life?! The secret is in the pumpkin tofu ricotta, made with tofu, sundried tomatoes, nutritional yeast, and a whole lotta pumpkin. Don't be mad if you finish it before putting the lasagna together.
Recipe: Pumpkin Lasagna
