Potluck Review

Every so often our church has a fellowship meal after the church service. Often the food committee plans a menu so that each family has only to bring "four dozen rolls" or "4# of ham balls" (just an example). But occasionally we have "pot luck" which means "bring a hot and cold dish"  or depends on the translation "bring the best, fattening food you can possibly think up".  I ,unlike some of my family, love tasting different kinds of food.
  By the way, who brought that black crock pot full of baked beans? I need the recipe.

Since people were asking about my food I thought I'd post it...it's not the fanciest or the fattening-est but it is Chinese food for the crock pot.

My daughter-in-law told me about this site and I tried the Mongolian Beef the other night-used ground beef instead.

Here is the recipe with the tweaks I made:

Slow Cooker Mongolian Beef

1 pound ground beef, (you can fry it before you put it in the crock pot, I simply thawed it when I had 6 hours to cook it. Fried it for church pot luck)

1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
3/4 cup soy sauce (I think it made it a bit strong ...start with 1/2 cup)
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup brown sugar

Fry or thaw your ground meat, put in crock pot.  Mix the remaining ingredients, be sure to wisk in the corn starch. Pour in the crock pot. Cook on high 2-3 hours or low 4-5 hours.  The "gravy" was a bit thick so I added water as the day went along. (This morning I added 4 cups of water  to my tripled recipe at 10 AM)  In our experience you can never have too much gravy.

Serve with rice

I made rice for pot luck too...searched the internet for recipes and those recipes had 2 cups water to 1 cup rice.....that makes mush when you are making jasmine rice.

I simply measured my washed rice* into the crock pot with my normal measurement of
 1 cup rice to 1-1/4 cup water and added a bit of salt.

I made 5 cups of rice to 6-1/4 cup water.... should've made more

Should've sprayed the crock with cooking spray too

cooked on high until for 2-1/2 hrs and then back to low (10 AM)until lunch was ready. It was plenty soft, but better than trying to make rice between end of church and "time to eat".

* You don't wash your rice? I don't always wash mine, but good Chinese mamas do. Supposedly takes off some of the starch and any impurities that might be on the rice. I only buy  jasmine rice anymore...well except for that one time I almost killed my family by buying regular Carolina rice....but let's not talk about that. Wa*mart sells it (bottom shelf below the Chinese flavorings or up a few rows under the Mexican food supplies) It's a bit more expensive but it's worth it.S*ms Club and your local Chinese food store carry the 25# bags. Put the amount of rice that you are making in a bowl, add water to cover by an inch or so....slosh the rice back and forth with your hands until the water is milky, pour off the water and do it again.  That my friends is "washed rice".



QOTD: The other Saturday I bought chicken pies for supper when DH got to the bottom of his he said "Uh Oh I shouldn't have eaten this....it's for singles only.