Recipe - Syn Free One Pot Chilli Beef Bake

This recipe was a revelation to me. Who doesn't love a one pot recipe, yummy comforting food with only one pan to wash up after? Call me lazy but why use two pots when one will do? And I am seriously crappy at cooking rice, so bunging it all in the pot to cook together is a perfect option for me. If you don't have a pan that will go from hob to oven, get one. It's worth it, think of all the fairy liquid you'll save only washing one pot! This is the one I have, and it's big enough for stews and casseroles, boiling a chicken carcass to make stock and batch cooking huge vats of soup and bolognese for freezing.

To make Syn Free One Pot Chilli Beef Bake for 4 people you will need:

• 400g lean beef mince
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 100g mushrooms, sliced
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 200ml beef stock
• 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 cup long grain rice
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp hot chilli powder (or to taste)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
• 80g reduced fat cheddar (1/2 HEA per portion)
• frylight

Frylight your pan and brown the mince and onion. Add all of the other ingredients apart from the cheese and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20-30 minutes until the rice is tender. Don't be tempted to stir too much as the rice will go stodgy but do check the liquid - it should all absorb but if it goes before the rice is cooked add a splash more water from a recently boiled kettle. Sprinkle the cheese on top and pop into the oven at 200/gas mark 6 until the cheese is melted and bubbly. 

Warning, this was volcanically hot so you might wish to let it cool for a few before serving. It made a huge pot and was really comforting. I mixed some yogurt in to cool it down for the kids, but it really wasn't overly spicy either. It was a bit of an experiment, but sometimes the chuck it all in and see what happens method pays off. Who says being lazy is bad for you?

Hx

Recipe - Syn Free Chicken Supreme

Quark is a funny old thing, really. It's cheese, but not really cheesy. It's spreadable, but you wouldn't really want to spread it on your ryvita like you would with philly. It's not very tasty, to be honest, unless you tart it up wit a bit of garlic or some chilli like I have here. If you don't like it, or can't find it in the shops (most supermarkets now do their own version, even Aldi and Lidl have jumped on the Quark bandwagon) then when it's used to make a sauce like I have here it's perfectly interchangable with fromage frais or natural yogurt, just add it at the end so it doesn't split. If you want to stuff a chicken breast, or mix in some chocolate powder and pretend it's a mousse, only Quark will do. And you can eat it to your hearts content on an SP day, if that's the way you swing. Technically the mustard in this recipe is 1 syn, but since it's split between 4 it's negligible. If you want to be holier-than-thou, use mustard powder instead, which is free.

To make Syn Free Chicken Supreme for 4 people you will need:

• 2 large or 4 small chicken breasts, cubed
• 1 onion, sliced
• tsp garlic powder
• 4 lean bacon medallions, chopped
• 300g mushrooms, halved
• 100g Quark
• 100ml chicken stock (I used half a cube)
• 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• salt and pepper
• frylight

In a large frylighted pan, soften your sliced onion with the garlic powder for about 5 minutes, before adding the chicken and bacon. Once the chicken is sealed, add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes more. In a bowl, mix the quark, stock, mustard, parsley and salt and pepper and whisk with a fork to combine (if using fromage frais or yogurt, leave this out and mix in at the end). Add the sauce mixture and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Serve with rice (or cauli rice for sadists SP followers) and speed veg of your choice.

I'm not a great lover of creamy sauces, I prefer tomato but, you guessed it, Mr MGAMT disagrees. But the mustard in this adds just enough of an edge for me. And of course, quark is a lot lighter than cream. If you use yogurt or fromage frais and it splits, don't worry, it will look like vomit but it's perfectly edible if you shut your eyes. If you want to make this veggie, I see no reason why quorn wouldn't work, just skip the sealing part and throw the sauce in with the quorn and leave out the bacon. Quark and quorn. Quackers.

Hx

Recipe- Slow Cooker Sausage Casserole

Who doesn't love a sausage? Well, I have to admit, the sausages I used for this recipe left something to be desired, unless you happen to like sausages that taste like cat litter. They sat languishing in my freezer and so I decided to use them up by putting them in a casserole to try and make them a little bit less cardboard-esque and then vow never to buy them again. You can use whatever sausages you like for this, just check the syns. The Slimming World sausages from Iceland aren't too awful, and would work well in this, and they're syn-free. The ones I used were Asda reduced fat sausages, at half a syn for 2, and trust me, they're not worth it. Add plenty of flavour in a stew, just don't put them in your fry up.

To make Slow Cooker Sausage Casserole for four you will need:

• 8 sausages (remember to check the syns)
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 200g mushrooms
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tin baked beans
• Worcestershire sauce
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tbsp mixed herbs
• salt and pepper

Brown your sausages under the grill. If you don't do this they end up looking like flaccid willies and are very unappealing. Chop your onion and mushrooms while they're browning. Once they're brown all over throw everything into your slow cooker, crumbling the stock cube, with a shake of Worcester sauce and salt and pepper, and cook on low for around 6 hours (or do it in the oven in a casserole dish at around gas 4/180 for an hour and a half). Serve with some green veg like broccoli, cabbage or kale.

Flavourless sausages, saved. My search for a decent banger continues...

Hx

Recipe- Syn Free Slow Cooker Chicken Chasseur

It's those skinless, boneless (fnar) chicken thighs again. This week I made them into a chicken chasseur in my slow cooker for 2 reasons: 1 - it was literally pissing it down, I got soaked on the school run twice and I wanted comfort food and 2 - Mr MGAMT isn't keen on anything that comes out of the slow cooker and he was being mean to me so I wanted to piss him off. Never annoy the person who cooks your food. Anyway, my mum used to make this a lot (with a packet mix, for shame) but I wanted to create a syn-free version and I think I got quite close. I served with a little rice and a lot of broccoli - speed food a-plenty.

To make Syn Free Slow Cooker Chicken Chasseur for 4 people you will need:

• 500g pack skinless, boneless chicken thighs
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 carrots
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 300ml chicken stock
• 1 tbsp dried mixed herbs
• 200g mushrooms
• salt and pepper

Chop your onion, mince your garlic, slice your carrots and quarter your mushrooms. Throw everything into a slow cooker (or oven dish if you don't have one) and season to taste. Cook on low for 8 hours (or in a low oven for 2 hours). That's it, done! 

This recipe would be good to make one of those "dump bags" with if you're an annoyingly organised person - just throw everything into a freezer bag, freeze, and then just defrost and "dump" into the slow cooker when you want it. A word on slow cookers - if you don't have one, you need one! They are so handy for soups, stews, chilli, ratatouille, curry, and great for using up what's in the bottom of the fridge. I have a Morphy Richards Sear and Stew with a metal pot which means you can brown your meat in the pot then stick the whole lot straight into the slow cooker - less washing up! Genius, and it's lighter than a ceramic pot so it doesn't make my bingo wings flap. The chicken is so tender cooking it this way, it will just fall apart - so even if you don't use the boneless thighs the meat falls off the bone anyway. 

Although it's been positively roasting here this week (34 degrees in mid-September!) it's time to face up to the fact that Autumn is coming, and so it'll be less salad, more stodge as the hunter-gatherer instinct make us want to lay down our winter fat stores, you can look forward to more SW stews and casseroles you lucky lucky buggers!

Ohh and if you're of the Pinterest persuasion, you can now pin me to your heart's content! 

Hx