Slow Cooker Crock Pot

A slow cooker is an excellent kitchen tool for whipping up party food without slaving over a stove all day. One festivity favorite is spicy party beans which is a one-pot-entrée in itself. Creating this dish with a slow cooker requires a bit of sautéing at first to bring the flavors out. But after that, all you need to do is dump in the ingredients and let the crock pot do its magic.

This spicy party beans slow cooker recipe calls for the following ingredients (portions fit well in a 6-quart cooker):

1 pound ground beef
1 pound of bulk pork sausage (if you can’t find it, substitute your favorite sausage links in stead – just take the skin off each link and mash the meat)
2 28-ounce cans of pork and beans
2 28-ounce cans of kidney beans (a good substitute is pinto beans)
1 cup of barbecue sauce
1 red bell pepper that’s chopped
1 onion that’s chopped
2 teaspoons of minced garlic
2 teaspoons of mild chili powder (add more if you want extra heat)
½ teaspoon of Cajun seasoning
½ teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Drain off the liquid from the kidney beans and rinse them under running water. After that, add them inside the slow cooker. Pour the pork and beans in there as well.

Heat the vegetable oil on high in a frying pan then sauté the sausage meat and ground beef until they change color. Make sure to break the meat apart as soon as it touches the heat so that you wouldn’t end up with bound-together meat.

When the meat’s brown (but not cooked all the way through), scoop them out with a slotted spoon (to drain excess oil) and dump the meat in the slow cooker. Also, mix it together so that the meat’s incorporated with the beans.

Turn the stove heat down to “medium” and sauté the onion, red bell pepper and garlic in the same frying pan. After a couple of minutes of sautéing, turn the heat off and use the slotted spoon again to scoop the vegetables out and put them in the slow cooker. Mix them with what’s already in the pot as well.

Finally, mix in the spices and barbecue sauce in the crock pot and cover it. Now, you can either set it to “high” that’ll put the cooking time for 3-4 hours or you can set it to “low” so that it’ll be done in 6-7 hours.

This slow cooker spicy party beans recipe is good for around 6-8 persons and is best served hot from the pot with rice or corn bread. You may also add one chopped red jalapeno pepper in the recipe as well – depending on you (and your party guests’) heat tolerance, of course.

Tags: Cooker, Slow Cooker, Crock Pot, Cooking, Food