I often put the slow cooker on when I know that there are going to be people coming and going and wanting feeding at different times in an evening. I usually do a fairly standard chicken casserole but the last couple of weeks I’ve experiemented with beef. One of them was rather improvised (didn’t check the cupboards before I started) but it wasn’t too bad, so I thought I’d share both recipes here.

Beef and Bean Stew

Take some beef (about 400g in this case) and brown it with some oil in a frying pan. Once its sealed all over, pop it in the slow cooker with a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce. Now leave it for 8 hours or so.

Beef and Lentil Casserole

Take some beef (I used 400g again, but it doesn’t matter), brown it and pop it in the slow cooker. Chop up an onion and a couple of carrots (and any other veg that come to hand) and pop them in the frying pan with some more oil. Use a whole stock cube and half a pint of boiling water to make some stock (this is different from the proportions in the instructions but it works). Once the veg starts to go soft in the pan, add some stock and let it simmer for three minutes. Stir in some cournflour and then add the contents of the pan to the slow cooker. Add the rest of the stock and a tin of lentil soup to the slow cooker. Leave it alone for eight hours.