Slowcooker Asian Beef and Broccoli

I think there seems to be a theme to my blog lately. As you may have noticed I love my crockpot and I use it a ton. While some people may use theirs once every month or two, I normally use mine once or twice a week. It's especially a great tool when I have no time or things in my life have been stressful. With two growing boys that seems to be a frequent occurrence. One food item that I struggle with my boys to eat is meat. Some weeks they love chicken, the next week pork. As you can imagine it can be mildly irritating. The crockpot has been a great tool to encourage my children to try new meat dishes without having to spend hours in the kitchen. Recently I tried a new recipe for Asian Beef and Broccoli from the September issue of Parents magazine, which with only 20 minutes of active time looked perfect for a weeknight meal.

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 6 1/2 hours of total time, 20 minutes of which is active and makes 6 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store and made no ingredient modifications. One major change that I made to the recipe was to the sear the beef before adding it to the crockpot. I always brown meat before adding it to the crockpot, it helps to retain the moisture while the meat cooks. Additionally, my two boys broke my fine-mesh sieve so I skipped that step and added all juice from the slowcooker to the pan. If you aren't a fan of  frozen broccoli, fresh broccoli would work just as well. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

My two boys loved the orange flavor in this recipe. I liked that each serving offers 44 grams of protein and was very child friendly. If you aren't a fan of store bought marmalade, home-made jam would work just as well. I have stopped serving white rice and this recipe worked great over brown rice. I think if I made it again I would use fresh broccoli, it would keep the broccoli crisper, which my family prefers.

For the recipe go to Asian Beef and Broccoli.