20 Great Slow Cooker Recipes to Set And Forget

Updated Nov 06, 2025

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Pulling pork loin apart with forks in slow cooker.

I always feel like a bit of a magician when I toss a handful of ingredients into a slow cooker in the morning and come home to a house that smells like dinner is about to be served. The slow cooker is the ultimate weeknight ally: patient, reliable, and very good at its job.

This collection of slow cooker recipes covers all the bases: hot dips, cozy soups, rich stews, saucy pulled meats, and hearty chilies that taste like you spent all day in the kitchen (well, I guess, technically your slow cooker did spend all day in the kitchen, so there’s that).

Woman lifting crockpot lid up with BBQ lamb in the pot.

20 Slow Cooker Recipes to Set and Forget: Choose from fall-apart pork, creamy mashed potatoes, hearty chilis, shredded chicken, and more!

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You CAN Win Friends with a Slow Cooker

One of my fondest cooking-for-a-crowd memories (and coincidentally, one of my sons’ more embarrassing ones) was when I decided to lug my slow cooker full of Red Lentil, Fennel, and Chicken Slow Cooker Soup to a football game for the end-of-season game-side potluck on a particularly chilly day, and it became very popular.

My boys loved the soup — they just weren’t too crazy about being the children of “that slow cooker mom.” But, when a number of their friends (including a bunch of girls) happily dug right in and were all “oh, Katie, you are awesome and this is delicious”, they grudgingly admitted that maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea after all.

Tips for Using Your Slow Cooker

Make sure your slow cooker model has an automatic timer that switches to “warming” mode when the cooking time is up. You don’t want it to turn off, nor do you want it to keep cooking the food past the intended cooking time.
Be generous with the seasonings. Flavors don’t concentrate as much when cooking with a crockpot, so you’ll want to make sure you add enough salt, pepper, spices, and herbs to come through.
Taste before serving. Unlike other types of cooking, it’s hardest to taste as you go, so you’ll want to check at the end to make sure it has the right level of seasoning.
Add some fresh ingredients at the end. Some fresh herbs, or perhaps a bit of acidity in the form of vinegar or citrus juice, are best added at the end so they keep their clean, fresh, bright flavors.
Continue to cook with the top off if you want to thicken up your dish. Almost no evaporation takes place when cooking with a crockpot. That means that your food could become a bit more watery than you want. If you continue to cook it with the lid off for a bit at the end, the liquid will have a chance to reduce.
Skip low-fat ingredients. Dairy can be tricky in the slow cooker, to begin with. Using dairy that is less than full-fat can cause sauces to curdle or separate. Stick with full-fat, but use dairy judiciously.
When the oven is full. Need a way to cook an extra dish for a gathering without using the oven or stovetop? The slow cooker can be your best friend, and very helpful during big holiday meals like Thanskgiving and Christmas.
Make it accessible. If your slow cooker is in a hard-to-reach place, fix that! The easier it is to pull out your crockpot, the more often you will put it to use. And, the more slow-cooked soups, stews, braises, roasts, and so on will fill your table with dinnertime happiness.

Switching Up the Slow Cooker Temperature

Adjust the temperature if needed. Most dishes can be cooked on either high or low in a slow cooker; the time is just different. The general rule of thumb is that foods that will take 8 hours on low will cook to tenderness in 4 hours on high. So, a 2:1 ratio for the low setting to the high setting. I usually prefer cooking things longer at the lower temperature for lower, slower cooking. But it’s nice to know there is flexibility, so you can make decisions based on the time you have.

20 Great Slow Cooker Recipes

Slow cookers (or Crockpots, depending on your household vocabulary!) are the kitchen’s quiet overachievers. They do the work while you are literally doing anything else.

This roundup gathers the best slow cooker recipes from my crockpot repertoire. From hearty soups and stews to tender roasts, shredded chicken, and warming chilis, these recipes are all built around simple prep and big flavor. These are the meals that make your kitchen smell amazing all day long, and the family will hustle to the dinner table.