15 Easy and Portable Slow Cooker Recipes for Tailgating

Slow Cooker Barbacoa Brisket Recipe

Slow cooking tougher cuts of meat, such as beef brisket, gives you a meltingly tender texture. For tacos, serve the saucy barbacoa in tortillas with green and red onion, cilantro leaves, jalapeño slices, and fresh lime wedges.

Tangy Italian Beef Sandwiches Recipe

Here's an example where the slow cooker excels: The beef slowly braises until it prac­tically falls to shreds. We like the mixture on sandwiches, but it's also delicious over a baked potato and topped with sour cream.

Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas Recipe

This slow cooker pork carnitas recipe is a perfectly simple and inexpensive way to feed a crowd. Set out a stack of warm corn tortillas along, with a few simple toppings, and allow everyone to pile on the unbelievably rich and tender pork as they please. 

Slow Cooker Cheesy Cottage Potatoes Recipe

Cottage potatoes can be both a side dish and a main dish—especially at breakfast. Either way, they're always popular. The ingredients are pantry staples, and if you don't have a bell pepper on hand then just leave it out. Serve this with a good cranberry sauce.

Note: This recipe is ideally suited to a six-quart oval slow cooker, but use what you have.

Cottage Potatoes

Excerpted from Stock the Crock by Phyllis Good. Copyright © 2017 Oxmoor House. Reprinted with permission from Time Inc. Books, a division of Time Inc. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Tips

This is a great use for leftover baked potatoes.

These potatoes also make great hash browns the next morning.

Make it gluten-free

Use gluten-free bread for the bread cubes. Cornbread is also a delicious option.

Make it for picky eaters

If you have veggie-haters, omit the onions and green peppers and increase the amount of potatoes, bread cubes, and cheese. The flavor changes, but it's still tasty with the rosemary, butter, and cheese.

Chile con Queso Recipe

You can't go wrong with a favorite like classic chile con queso. Diced green chiles can be substituted for roasted green chiles.

Slow-Cooker White Chili with Turkey Recipe

Consider dinner covered for the day after Thanksgiving. This comforting slow cooker recipe is made with leftover turkey and will feed a full house. Cornmeal helps thicken this chili, and adds a hint of toasty corn flavor. Choose fine, rather than coarse, cornmeal for the smoothest texture.

Easy Slow-Cooker Jambalaya Recipe

Have dinner ready when you come home with this ultimate, slow-cooker Jambalaya. Featuring chicken, shrimp and smoked sausage, this classic Creole rice dish is perfect for the slow-cooker as all the flavors blend together over time in a marvelous way. As a simple one-pot meal, bring Jambalaya to your next potluck as a crowd-pleasing dish that doesn't skimp on flavor or presentation. Don't be afraid of making too much because leftover Jambalaya still tastes great warmed up the next day with a splash of your favorite hot sauce.

Slow Cooker Shrimp Boil Recipe

For a classic summery meal without a fuss, look no further than this slow cooker shrimp boil. With a simple ingredient list and a largely hands-off cooking method, this easy seafood boil is a perfect recipe to plan on for casual warm weather entertaining or even as a low-effort meal to make at the rental house during a beach vacation.

Slow-Cooker Barbecue Chicken Recipe

Does it get much easier than this summer crockpot recipe? Slow-cook chicken breasts in a mixture of bottled barbecue sauce, Italian dressing, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce for a tender, sweet, and tangy barbecue chicken that's great on a bun or even over a baked potato. This is a stress-free and tasty meal of which the whole family will want seconds. 

Slow-Cooker Salsa Chicken Recipe

Reader Lacey Houseman, 29, from Thomaston, Georgia says, "I like to toss this together before I leave the house, and a few hours later, dinner is ready."

Crock-Pot BBQ Ribs Recipe

If you're skeptical about ribs in a slow cooker, prepare to be amazed by the tender and delicious results. Cooking ribs doesn't get easier than this two-step method, and while they serve as the perfect summer entrée, you can make this crockpot ribs recipe just as easily at any time of year. Start by selecting the style you like: baby back ribs, spare ribs, St. Louis style ribs, or country style pork ribs. Combine with your favorite sweet and smoky BBQ sauce and let your Crock-Pot take it from there. These easy slow cooker ribs are fall-off-the-bone tasty.

Crock-Pot Chili Recipe

This hearty and super-easy crock-pot chili recipe takes just minutes to prepare before simmering low and slow for 4 hours. Red wine adds body to this traditional chili recipe, which features classic ingredients like green bell pepper, onion, stewed tomatoes, kidney beans, cumin, and chili powder. Top with shredded cheddar cheese, corn chips, sour cream, and slices of fresh avocado and serve with Buttermilk Cornbread for a satisfying supper no one will be able to resist.

Slow Cooker Chicken Chili Recipe

This piping hot chili is loaded with hearty chicken and veggies for a meal that is perfect for chilly days.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork with Bourbon-Peach Barbecue Sauce Recipe

Smoked paprika comes from a centuries-old tradition in which chile peppers are slowly dried over low-burning fires of Spanish oak and then ground into powder. In the slow cooker, this earthy, aromatic spice adds outdoor smoked barbecue flavor.

Slow-Cooker Sloppy Joes Recipe

Sloppy joes are easy to prepare and budget-friendly. For this super-easy, hands-off recipe, throw all the ingredients together in 15 minutes and let your slow cooker do the rest of the work. This is our A+ recipe--just like the one's your mom used to make.To freeze leftover Sloppy Joe mixture, let cool completely. Place in zip-top plastic freezer bags; lay bags flat, and stack in freezer. Freeze up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge, or defrost in the microwave.