Slow Cooker Bacon & Cabbage

This sounds less appetising than it actually is! I have recently started college, so my time for cooking has been greatly reduced. This is a great recipe that can be bunged in the slow cooker, ready for when you get home. The juices that run out of the bacon joint are used to make a tasty sauce to pour over. I love recipes where you can put everything in together, less washing up too!

Serves 4

1kg bacon joint
1 pointed cabbage, cut into wedges
12 baby carrots
1 onion, quartered
1 bay leaf
500ml water
8 potatoes, halved or quartered (depending on size)
150ml double cream
Chopped parsley


Place the potatoes, onion & carrots in the bottom of the slow cooker. Lay the bacon joint on top, then squash in the cabbage all round it. Pop in the bay leaf, pour in the water then put the lid on & cook on low for 6/7 hours. When ready, remove the bacon & slice up. Remove 150ml of the stock from the slow cooker, mix with cream, pepper & parsley & warm back up. Use this sauce to pour over the bacon & vegetables.

Slow Cooker Boston Baked beans

I love to cook a gammon joint in my slow cooker with nothing but 2 tablespoons of brown sugar in with it. The meat that comes out is amazing! As soon as I remove the gammon though, I am left with a crock pot full of gammon & brown sugar stock, which seems a shame to waste. This time I added some beans & other ingredients, plus some left over shredded gammon, and created these tasty boston baked beans. They were fab on jacket potatoes topped with cheese.

Leftover gammon & brown sugar liquid from slow cooker
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp tomato purée
1 tbsp maple syrup
 2 tsp English mustard powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 x 400g cans cannellini or haricot beans, drained and rinsed - I used a tin of both
Leftover shredded gammon

Just add all the ingredients to the slow cooker, and cook on low for as long as you can. Mine were on for about 8 hours.

Slow Cooker Gammon & Cauliflower Cheese.

This was an amazingly easy dinner! This morning I put a 1kg smoked gammon joint into the slow cooker and left it on all day. The smell in the house was delicious! Nothing goes better than gammon than cauliflower cheese :) This sauce was so creamy, I really do love this method of making it.

1 1kg gammon joint (I use smoked)

Pop in the slow cooker on high for 5 hours (or more, it doesnt matter)


1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
2 large handfuls of grated cheese (sorry, I forgot to weight it!)
1 tablespoon cornflour
250ml single cream
Pinch mustard powder


Bring a pan of salted water to the boil & cook teh cauliflower until tender. Warm the single cream in a saucepan and add the pinch of mustard powder. Heat the cream byt do not let it boil. Coat the grated cheese in the cornflour, then add to the warmed cream a bit at a time. Stir gently til it melts then add more. Serve poured on top of the cauliflower & gammon.