Poppy O’Toole’s slow-cooker ‘full-of-vegetables’ casserole (Image: Poppy O’Toole)
Packed with leeks, carrots, potatoes, frozen peas and sweetcorn, this is a nutritious meal that is really economical to prepare but bursting with health benefits. It makes it a great one to add to your weekly repertoire.
It’s healthy but packed with flavour and also involves minimum fuss because, after a bit of simple prep, you can simply put all the ingredients in the slow cooker and allow it to work its magic.
With lots of different vegetables and herbs, you’re getting lots of plant polyphenols that are excellent for your gut microbiome and your overall health.
The comes from and cooking star Poppy O’Toole (Poppy Cooks). She has been teaching children how to cook with a slow cooker as part of the campaign – a £4 million project to give children a healthy, nutritious boost thanks to daily fruit and veg and slow cookers.
Poppy said: “It’s about getting everyone a bit more inspired to see how easy and accessible cooking in the slow cooker can be. It’s also a great way of utilising those yellow label foods that are close to their best before date. Just pop them all in the slow cooker and you have a delicious meal.”
As it’s made up in large part with bulky and cheaper vegetables, it’s a way of making a large meal to feed your family which you can even batch cook and keep or freeze for following days too.
Poppy O’Toole has more than a million followers on social media (Image: Poppy O’Toole)
Slow-cooker full-of-vegetables casserole
- Serves 4-6
- Takes 3 hrs 30 mins-6 hrs 30 mins
Ingredients
- 2 leeks, cut into 1cm slices
- 400g Maris Piper potatoes, cut into 2cm slices
- 500g Chantenay carrots, cleaned and tops removed
- 250g frozen sweetcorn
- 250g frozen peas
- 2ltr stock, made with 2 reduced-salt vegetable stock cubes
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- pinch of dried sage
- pinch of thyme
- 4 tbsp corn flour
- 125g low-fat cream cheese
- 10g chopped parsley, frozen or fresh
Method
1. Put all the ingredients except the peas, sweetcorn, cornflour, cream cheese and parsley in the slow-cooker, season well and stir. Cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 6 hours.
2. Mix the cornflour with a little water to make a slurry and add that to the slow- cooker along with the peas, sweetcorn, cream cheese and parsley. Stir well, then cook for a further 30 minutes.