I learned to cook the way I actually cook during the years I was home with three small children. I had been working full time and intended to go back, life threw some curveballs, and I ended up a stay at home mom for a while, which is when I taught myself to make everything I wanted to eat. Healthy crockpot recipes were the thing that saved those weeks: dinners you assemble once, freeze flat in a bag, and drop into the slow cooker on a morning you already know will get away from you. The 25 below are soups, stews, shredded chicken, chili, whole roasts and enough dump-and-go bags to fill a freezer shelf. Some are five ingredients. Some feed twelve. All of them ask for about ten minutes from you and then leave you alone until dinner.
Healthy Crock Pot Recipes and Slow Cooker Ideas
1. Slow Cooker Chili Mac
Chili and macaroni cheese are two different kinds of comfort, and this one refuses to choose. Lean ground beef, chili beans in sauce, crushed tomatoes and beef broth go in together and cook on low for eight hours, and the elbow macaroni does not go anywhere near the pot until the last 15 minutes. That is the part worth writing down, because pasta added early turns to paste in a slow cooker. It feeds eight, which is a lot of lunches out of one crockpot.
Get the full tutorial at Countryside Cravings.
2. Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos
Ground chicken, a whole onion, two bell peppers and a zucchini go in raw with a couple of tablespoons of taco seasoning and a can of tomatoes with green chiles, and four hours later you have taco filling with three vegetables hiding in it. Brown the chicken briefly first so it crumbles instead of clumping. It makes six servings and it freezes flat in a bag, which is the entire point of a list like this one.
Get the full tutorial at Sweet C's Designs.
3. Freezer To Slow Cooker Italian Wedding Soup
Italian wedding soup is small meatballs, greens and broth, and it is one of the best candidates on this list for the freezer because nothing in it suffers from being frozen raw and thawed. Assemble the meatballs and vegetables in a bag, freeze flat, then tip the whole thing into the crockpot on a morning you already know will get away from you. A 12 ounce bag of frozen mini meatballs, a head of thinly sliced escarole, carrots, onion and eight cups of broth make six servings, and the escarole is what makes it taste like the real thing rather than soup with meatballs dropped in it.
Get the full tutorial at New Leaf Wellness.
4. Crock Pot Salsa Beef
Five minutes of work: onion, bell peppers and a pound of ground beef into the pot, broken up with a spoon, then a 16 ounce jar of mild salsa mixed with garlic, cumin, smoked paprika and chipotle powder poured over the top. Low for eight hours or high for four. If you like your peppers with some bite left in them, start checking early rather than at the end. Four servings over rice, and the chipotle is what stops it tasting like a jar of salsa.
Get the full tutorial at Get Inspired Everyday.
5. Slow Cooker Creamy Portobella Chicken
Three ingredients, and I mean three: a pint of baby bella mushrooms, a pound and a half of chicken tenderloins and one can of cream of chicken soup. Chicken on the bottom, mushrooms over it, soup poured across the top, salt and pepper, high for four hours or low for six. Taste it before you serve it, because with a list this short the seasoning is the only place flavor can come from. It is the dinner you make when the day already won.
Get the full tutorial at Cutefetti.
6. Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup
This one starts on the stove, and it is worth the extra pan. Shallots, celery, carrots and thyme get sauteed until the shallots start to caramelize, then curry powder, two and a half cups of yellow split peas and six cups of stock go in and the crockpot takes over for about two hours on high. It is completely meat free and does not need a ham bone, which surprises people. Serves four to six and thickens overnight, so loosen it with stock when you reheat.
Get the full tutorial at Lemons and Anchovies.
7. Easy Crockpot 15 Bean Minestrone Soup
A 20 ounce bag of 15 bean soup mix, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, green beans, bay leaves and 64 ounces of vegetable broth, six hours on high and you have not touched it once. The pasta cooks separately and goes in at the end with the diced tomatoes, which keeps the shells from disintegrating. It is a full meal in a bowl rather than a starter, and if you want meat in it, chicken, ham, sausage or ground beef all work without changing anything else.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
8. Easy Crockpot Veggie Soup
Two pounds of browned ground beef, half an onion, three diced potatoes, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, three cans of diced tomatoes and four cups of beef broth, low for four to six hours or high for two to three. Browning the beef first is the only stove work and it is not optional, because unbrowned beef in a crockpot goes gray and greasy. Use whatever vegetables are in the freezer. This is a leftovers soup pretending to be a recipe.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
9. Easy Crockpot Recipe for 20 Minute Tuscan Pasta
A freezer to crockpot pasta with a creamy tomato sauce, built so the bag comes out of the freezer and the work is already done. Pasta dishes are the trickiest thing to slow cook because the noodles want to overcook, so anything promising 20 minutes is stirring them in at the end rather than letting them sit in liquid all day. Sixteen ounces of bow tie pasta, four tablespoons of butter, four cloves of garlic, eight ounces of cream cheese cubed, a jar of rinsed sun dried tomatoes, two cups of milk and eight ounces of grated Parmesan, with cooked cubed chicken folded through at the end. Eight servings.
Get the full tutorial at Six Sisters' Stuff.
10. Easy Crockpot Chili Recipe
Two pounds of ground beef, four cans of chili beans, four cans of tomato sauce and two cans of Mexican style diced tomatoes, low for six to eight hours. It makes eight to twelve servings on purpose, because the creator’s own habit is to double it and eat off it all week as chili dogs, chili fries and Frito pie. That is the smartest thing about it. Chili is one of the few dishes that genuinely improves after a night in the refrigerator.
Get the full tutorial at Sidetracked Sarah.
11. Crock Pot Cowboy Casserole
Potatoes go in the bottom of the crock and get salted generously, which matters more than it sounds like it should, then onion, garlic, browned ground beef, kidney beans, a can of diced tomatoes and a quarter cup of water. Low for seven to eight hours, and the cheddar only goes on for the last 15 minutes. Six medium potatoes and a pound and a half of beef make this a genuine feed-the-table dinner rather than a side.
Get the full tutorial at Funny is Family.
12. Paleo Crock Pot Cashew Chicken
Cashew chicken is usually a takeout order built on cornstarch and sugar, and the paleo version rebuilds it with coconut aminos, arrowroot and whole cashews instead. In a slow cooker the chicken goes tender rather than crisp, so treat it as a saucy bowl over cauliflower rice and not as a copy of the restaurant plate. Add the cashews at the very end, whatever recipe you follow, or they soften and lose the only crunch in the dish.
Get the full tutorial at Preppy Paleo.
13. Crock Pot Pesto Chicken Salad
Chicken salad without a spoonful of mayonnaise in it. A pound and a half of chicken breasts cook in a cup of broth on high for three hours, then get shredded and folded into a pesto made from basil, baby spinach, cashews and lemon juice. The spinach stretches the basil, which is the thrifty trick worth stealing for any pesto. Serve it in a wrap, over lettuce or on bread, six servings, and it is genuinely good cold from the refrigerator.
Get the full tutorial at Lexi's Clean Kitchen.
14. Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Quinoa
Quinoa cooks in the crockpot beautifully as long as there is enough liquid, and here it has two cups of enchilada sauce plus a cup of water to drink up. Ground chicken, black beans, corn, fire roasted tomatoes and jalapeno go in with it, high for three hours, until every bit of liquid is absorbed. Cheese goes in at the end and melts under the lid. Eight servings, and it is the rare one-pot dinner with real protein and no rice in sight.
Get the full tutorial at Bobbi's Kozy Kitchen.
15. Crock Pot Hawaiian Chicken
Four ingredients and no browning: two large chicken breasts, a third of a cup of coconut aminos whisked with half a cup of coconut sugar, a can of pineapple rings and a chopped green bell pepper laid around the edges. High for three to four hours or low for six to eight, then dice the chicken and serve it. It is paleo, it is sweet and salty the way takeout is, and four ingredients is about as low as a weeknight gets.
Get the full tutorial at Plaid and Paleo.
16. Bacon Covered Kalua Pork
Five ingredients and twelve hours: a bone-in pork butt poked all over and stuffed with chopped garlic, rubbed with Hawaiian sea salt, optionally hit with liquid smoke, then wrapped in bacon and left on low overnight. If the bacon is not crisp at the end, the pork goes under the broiler for a few minutes. Then crumble the bacon back through the shredded meat. No sauce, no packet, nothing processed, and it makes enough to freeze in portions.
Get the full tutorial at Happy Money Saver.
17. Crock Pot Roast With Green Beans
Pot roast and green beans in one crock is the oldest freezer meal there is, and it still earns its place. The trick nobody tells you is that green beans do not need eight hours, so if you want them to stay green rather than army drab, add them in the last hour instead of at the start. It is four ingredients: a two pound boneless beef chuck shoulder roast, a pound of green beans, a packet of onion soup mix and a cup of water, on low for eight hours until the beef shreds with a fork. Six servings.
Get the full tutorial at New Leaf Wellness.
18. Slow Cooker Ginger Beef
Two to four tablespoons of fresh ginger, grated on a microplane, is what makes this taste like something rather than like beef in broth. Beef roast, carrots, scallions, red bell pepper, garlic, tamari and stock go in and cook on low for six to eight hours, thickened with tapioca or arrowroot rather than flour. The sugar snap peas are steamed separately for three minutes at the end so they stay bright. Four to six servings over rice.
Get the full tutorial at Kitchen Stewardship.
19. Freezer To Crock Pot Chicken Fajitas
Fajitas are one of the few dump-bag freezer meals that genuinely come out the way you hoped. Chicken, sliced peppers and onion and seasoning go into a bag raw, freeze flat, then go straight into the crock from frozen. Drain some liquid off before you serve it or the tortillas go soggy, which is the one thing nobody warns you about. Two pounds of chicken breast, two sliced bell peppers, a sliced yellow onion, garlic, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and chili powder, cumin, paprika and crushed red pepper flakes all go into the one bag together.
Get the full tutorial at The Humbled Homemaker.
20. Slow Cooker Chicken Teriyaki Bowls
Teriyaki in a slow cooker is a sauce problem more than a chicken problem: the chicken will be perfect, and the sauce will be thin unless you thicken it after. Pull the chicken out, whisk a cornstarch slurry into the liquid, put it back. Serve it over rice with something raw and crunchy on top, because the whole bowl is soft otherwise. Six chicken breasts with a cup of broth, half a cup of teriyaki sauce, a third of a cup of brown sugar and minced garlic, six hours on low, then served over four cups of rice with steamed carrots and broccoli.
Get the full tutorial at Six Sisters' Stuff.
21. Crock Pot Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken breasts, cream of chicken soup, milk, four diced potatoes, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables and celery go in together and cook on low for six to eight hours, then the chicken gets shredded straight back into the pot. The biscuits bake separately in the oven and sit on top of each bowl, which is the sensible way to do it, because biscuit dough in a slow cooker steams rather than bakes. Eight servings and five minutes of prep.
Get the full tutorial at Eating on a Dime.
22. Crock Pot Mexican Chicken Salad
A shredded chicken salad with Mexican seasoning, built to be cooked once and eaten four different ways: in tacos, over greens, in a wrap or with chips. Chicken salads like this are the best argument for a slow cooker on a Sunday, because shredded chicken is the single most useful thing you can have waiting in the refrigerator.
Get the full tutorial at Sublime Reflection.
23. Simple Crock Pot Spaghetti Squash With Meat Sauce
A whole washed spaghetti squash goes in the crock with ground turkey, five crushed garlic cloves, two large cans of crushed tomatoes and Italian seasoning, low for about six hours. Then you halve the squash, scrape the strands out with a fork and spoon the sauce over. The squash steams in the sauce rather than roasting, so it comes out softer than an oven version, which some people prefer. Four servings, no pasta, no pot to drain.
Get the full tutorial at Confessions of a Fit Foodie.
24. Crock Pot Stuffed Pepper Soup
Everything good about a stuffed pepper with none of the stuffing. A pound of ground turkey, three chopped bell peppers, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, half a cup of short grain brown rice and two cups of broth. Brown rice is the detail that matters, because white rice turns to mush over a long cook and brown rice holds its shape. Four servings, and a fresh pepper chopped in at the end brings back the crunch the long cook takes away.
Get the full tutorial at My Crazy Good Life.
25. Slow-Cooker Turkey Breast with Two Sauces
A three pound turkey breast roast on a bed of thick onion slices, rubbed with butter mixed with nutmeg, garlic powder and smoked paprika, low for four hours until it hits 165. Rest it 20 minutes, then five to ten minutes under the broiler for color, because a slow cooker will never brown anything. Two sauces come with it: a thyme gravy from the strained drippings and a cashew sage cream. Twelve servings, so it works for a holiday as easily as a Tuesday.
Get the full tutorial at The Foodie and The Fix.
