Cooking Light: Spicy Beef and Barley Soup

If you're looking for an easy, healthy and YUMMY weeknight recipe, I highly recommend this spicy beef barley soup, conveniently made in a crock pot. It takes just a few minutes to throw all the ingredients together in the morning, and when you get home, your house smells great, and after you heat up a little crusty bread to go with this (you'll want it to soak up the broth), you've got a hearty, healthy dinner.

I actually don't have any commentary on how to improve this recipe, because it's great as-is. I cut this out of a Cooking Light in 2007, and we still pull it out and make it fairly regularly. That's when you know a recipe is great :)

***I posted this awhile back, and recently I tried it without doing any of the browning/sauteeing that is in the directions. I just threw everything raw in the crock pot together. Guess what? The recipe was every bit as good! Woo hoo! Makes an easy recipe even easier.

Real Simple: Sweet and Spicy Asian Pork Shoulder

I made this for Superbowl Sunday this year, and it was a big hit at our house.

For us, it's definitely a weekend recipe, as even though it takes just a few minutes to get it ready for the crock pot (10 minutes), it takes forever to finish cooking. But I guess if we didn't have curious and hungry dogs (a bad combination) to worry about, we could start it in the morning and come home to an almost finished dinner on a weekday.

One recommendation I would make is to add a thinly sliced onion to the crock pot when you start cooking. The onions soaked up all the yummy sauce and tasted amazing. The rest of the recipe I followed verbatim. I chose not to use the five-spice powder as I forgot to get it at the store and I didn't have any on-hand. I didn't miss it, but you might want to try it. It could make a great recipe even better.