Crockpots can make cooking lunches and dinners easy, but not when the recipe requires additional boiling, sauteing, browning, or other cooking. Enter the “dump recipe,” a simple way of cooking in which a bunch of ingredients can be dumped into your slow cooker and allowed to cook for an extended period of time, with the only required prep being some chopping or mixing. (You may need to shred meat or add additional ingredients for a few of these, but not until your meal is already close to being done.) Skip the super sophisticated recipes this spring and celebrate April—and beyond—with these “foolproof” crockpot dump recipes.
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Baked ziti
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A baked ziti recipe that doesn’t require boiling? It is indeed possible, and The Kitchn can show you how it’s done. Spoiler: You just put pasta, sauce, ricotta, and mozzarella in your crockpot and let it do all the work, which can take as little as an hour on high.
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Beef & broccoli
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Beef broth, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and garlic go into your crockpot along with thinly sliced chuck roast. Add the broccoli and stir in a mixture of cornstarch and water 30 minutes before it’s done, and you’ve got yourself a simple yet satisfying meal. Get the details from Damn Delicious.
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Beef brisket
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Not only does the slow cooker do all the work for this beef brisket recipe from Lil’ Luna, but it only requires five ingredients: brisket, dry onion soup mix, garlic powder, brown sugar, and chili sauce. After 8-10 hours on low, all that’s left to do is shred or slice the beef!
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Carrot ginger soup
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You’ll need to use an immersion blender and add the cream before serving this carrot ginger soup, but that’s at least 3 hours after dumping all the other ingredients in your crockpot. The Busy Baker can spare some time to show you how to make this one.
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Cheesy spinach tortellini
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For this meal, all you need to do is chuck your tortellini in the pot; add your sauce, water, spinach, and mozzarella; and cook on high for about an hour. Please note that the recipe from The Kitchn is for fresh tortellini, so if you’re using the frozen variety, you’ll need to thaw them first.
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Chicken & shrimp gumbo
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Start by putting chicken, red peppers, tomato, onion, celery, and spices in your slow cooker. Then just set it on low for six hours, and kick back. If you want to add shrimp, AllRecipes suggests doing it three minutes before the whole thing is done.
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Ham & bean soup
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A bag of dried bean soup mix makes this slow cooker meal from Dinner at the Zoo even easier. It also contains ham, onion, celery, garlic, tomatoes, and a blend of spices, but you can skip the meat for a vegetarian-friendly version.
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Mac & cheese
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If baked ziti can be made in the slow cooker, why not mac & cheese, too? Running in a Skirt has the creamy, cheesy recipe, which can be ready in just 2-3 hours on low.
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Meatball subs
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This recipe from Real Housemomscan tell you how to make both sauce and meatballs from scratch, and then it all goes into the slow cooker for 7-8 hours on low. Short on prep time? You can instead use sauce from a jar and pre-made frozen meatballs, which only require about 3-4 hours on low.
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Meatloaf
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We absolutely adore this melt-in-your-mouth meatloaf recipe from Taste of Home. It’s moist, flavorful, and your slow cooker does all the work. Mix up eggs, milk, minced onion, salt, rubbed sage, and breadcrumbs; crumble ground beef over this concoction; roll the whole thing into a ball, and stick it in the slow cooker for 5-6 hours on high (or 2-3 on low). Just before it’s done, slather the loaf in a ketchup-based concoction—although personally, we swap the ketchup for a 50/50 mix of ketchup and barbecue sauce.
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Moroccan chickpea soup
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Although it also contains butternut squash, red lentils, red peppers, tomatoes, onions, and ginger, chickpeas are obviously the star of this Moroccan stew from Simply Quinoa. As the website name suggests, it is recommended that you serve it with a side of quinoa.
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Pot roast
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This really simple recipe from Don’t Waste the Crumbsonly requires five ingredients. You layer potatoes, carrots, and chuck roast in your crockpot, cover the whole thing with dry onion soup mix and cream of mushroom soup and cook on low for at least eight hours. Just before you’re ready to eat, shred the beef!
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Pulled pork
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Whisk together paprika, salt, garlic powder, and brown sugar, and spread the mixture over a pork shoulder roast. This recipe from Betty Crocker includes both low and high heat options, but we prefer the former, which takes 7 to 8 hours. After shredding the pork, adding barbecue sauce, and cooking for an additional 10-15 minutes, it’s ready to be nestled inside a bun. (We like to add a scoop of coleslaw, too.)
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Ratatouille
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We’re not sure if Remy the rat would approve of making ratatouille in a slow cooker, but Taste of Home does, and that makes it OK in our book. After seasoning your eggplant and chopping it along with tomatoes, zucchini, onions, green and yellow peppers, olives, garlic, and basil, these ingredients and a couple of others go into the pot for 3-4 hours on high.
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Salsa chicken
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It’s difficult to find a recipe easier than this salsa chicken from The Typical Mom. Place chicken breasts in the bottom of your slow cooker, top with salsa, add some extra onions (and optional peppers), sprinkle taco seasoning, and cook on high for four hours. You can eat the chicken whole, shred it for a rice bowl, or use it as a taco filling.
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Sausage & peppers
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Cooked sausages that don’t require browning? That’s right! The only appliance required for this sausage & peppers recipe from The Salty Marshmallow is your slow cooker…unless you also want to toast the buns!
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Seafood cioppino
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Seafood cioppino is a warm blend of both fish and shellfish in a tomato-based broth. This version from Taste of Home uses haddock, shrimp, clams, and crabmeat, all of which are stirred into the slow cooker 30 minutes before it’s done.
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Sweet potato chili
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The most work for this chicken & sweet potato chili recipe from Taste of Home is chopping the potatoes, chicken, onion, and garlic—and we buy dried minced onion and minced garlic, which takes out half of that work. It’s so easy that the recipe only includes one step: putting everything other than the toppings into the slow cooker.
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Vegetable soup
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A hearty tomato-based soup loaded with vegetables is the perfect cure for a rainy April evening. Feel free to include your favorite ingredients (and exclude ones you don’t like), but this version from Real Food—Whole Life features celery, carrots, green beans, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and a handful of spices.
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White chicken chili
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Juicy chicken, whole kernel corn, green chilis, and cannellini beans are the highlights of this white chicken chili from the Magical Slow Cooker. These ingredients and a mixture of spices go into the pot, and in as little as four hours, it’s ready to shred, garnish, and enjoy.
