It all started with a challenge – a Crock Pot Challenge hosted by Julie over at Peanut Butter Fingers. A few weeks down the road and 10 crock pot recipes later, I’m hooked. Not only does it make for delicious and flavorful breakfasts, lunches, and dinners (Yep, that’s right. As I’ve found out, there are crock pot recipes for every meal of the day!), but it makes cooking and clean-up crazy easy.

Today, I’m linking up over at Peanut Butter Fingers with who knows how many other fellow bloggers to share our Crock Pot Challenge experiences and recipes – the good, the so-so, the OMG delicious, and the complete flops.

Here’s a recap of the 10 crock pot recipes I made and/or tried for this challenge:

1. Slow Cooker Banana Steel Cut Oatmeal

This one is definitely a keeper and I look forward to making it again soon! I loved how satiated it kept me all morning and how it just got better and better as the days went by.

2. Crock Pot Vegetable Korma

I’ve made vegetable korma before, but this was my first time trying it in the crock pot. It was really tasty and I think I’ll probably continue to make it in the crock pot going forward. It’s so much easier in terms of being able to just throw everything in the crock pot and forget about it for several hours.

3. Crock Pot Black Bean & Vegetable Enchiladas

This recipe was probably one of my favorites out of this challenge. These enchiladas were loco flavorful and loaded with veggies. They will be reappearing in my crock pot again, no doubt about it.

4. Crock Pot Caldo de Pollo

Did I say the enchiladas were my favorite? I take that back, this was probably my favorite. Though, to be fair, this was a recipe handed down to me from my mother-in-law and there’s really no competing with family recipes that are passed from one generation to the next. I enjoyed every single bite and slurp of this soup and already can’t wait to make it again.

5. Slow Cooker Spinach & Mozzarella Frittata

Like I mentioned in a previous post, this recipe was an epic failure. I think it just might be that eggs don’t really cook well in the crock pot. If anyone thinks differently and knows of any crock pot egg-based breakfast recipes that totally rock, please pass along the info.!

6. Crock Pot Moroccan Lentil Stew

This was a recipe I tried from A Full Measure of Happiness blog. I made some modifications to it, but completely forgot to note them. Whoopsie. I know for sure that I veggified the recipe a bit by adding in some zucchini, celery, and cauliflower. I also upped the cinnamon and tweaked the spices a bit. But, that’s as far as my memory serves me. It was really, really good stuff. I highly recommend trying out the recipe and tweaking it to your taste.

7. Crock Pot Blueberry + Peach Steel Cut Oatmeal

Because my banana steel cut oats turned out so good, I thought I’d experiment a bit with some different fruits and flavors. Unfortunately, this recipe turned out only so-so and isn’t quite share-worthy yet. But, it has a lot of potential so I’m not giving up that easily! I’m going to work on tweaking the recipe some more and will share it when it has a bit more of a “wow” factor.

8. Crock Pot BBQ Pulled Pork Burgers

This was, as I’m sure you can imagine, a complete and utter delicious mess. I don’t think there was a single finger or inch of my face left unscathed by BBQ sauce when I was finished munching this burger. So, a bib might be in order to eat this, but the flavor’s worth looking like a fool. This was all just a major tease, though, because I won’t be posting the recipe until later this week or next week. [*Update* The recipe has now been posted!]

9. Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

One of my all-time favorite recipes is my husband’s Chicken Tortilla Soup. In the spirit of the challenge and completely enamored with my crock pot, I got the wild idea of seeing if I could make this soup in the slow cooker. I’m very happy to say that it turned out great! I’ll be posting the recipe soon (in the next week or so), so keep checking back because, trust me, you don’t want to miss this one. [*Update* The recipe has now been posted!]

10. Crock Pot Black Beans from Scratch

Since I’ve been such a tease with the last two recipes, I’m gonna make up for it here. Being the bean lover and healthy cheapskate that I am, I thought it’d be fun to save some money and experiment with making my own beans from scratch rather than purchasing canned beans. These turned out great and were surprisingly easy to make.

Although it takes a bit more effort and forethought to use homemade beans as opposed to canned beans, I think I’m gonna try and stick with the homemade ones. I’m not too savvy when it comes to canning and all that good stuff, so I just opted to store my beans in a ziploc bag in the freezer in 1.5 cups increments, since that’s equivalent to one can.

I’ve already gone through several of the bags and they taste great. Although, I probably wouldn’t use the frozen beans (defrosted of course) in a fresh salad. I’d either opt for a can of beans or a fresh batch of homemade beans.

I hope you’ve enjoyed all of the crock pot recipes I’ve been throwing at you lately!

Thanks to Julie for hosting this fun challenge and be sure to head over to her blog to scope out everyone else’s delish crock pot recipes.