Crockpot recipes for someone on a SUPER soft diet?
December 16, 2023 1:51 PM   Subscribe

This is for a senior with very little left to chew with. If you have tips on getting meat that’s maybe not the *most* expensive as soft as a noodle, I would be thrilled to hear about it.

The less prep the better. The eater likes Eastern European, French, probably English, and Chinese food.

TIA
posted by cotton dress sock to Food & Drink (11 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
How about patés, mousses or quenelles?
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:02 PM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


....chuck steak is a great substitute for short ribs which are overpriced now, btw. I use either at 350 degrees in a bottle of red wine in a conventional oven for 3 hours but I am certain you could do it in a slow cooker just as easily, and if you go far enough, the fibers break apart. I don't have a slow cooker but I think that's pretty much what most people do with slow cookers?

The meat freezes well. I almost always serve this with risotto for holidays and will freeze leftover risotto so it sits on top of the meat - mentioning this if 'getting additional calories' is a concern; the risotto is a bit of upfront work, but it does freeze well if you panfry it. Even if you just microwave it, it's still risotto.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:08 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


Crockpot suggestions:

Bed of root vegetables: carrot, potato, celery, onion *no cutting needed*. Rest a whole chicken on top. Add a little bit of water. Low setting for about five to six hours. Chicken and vegetables are butter soft, with really tasty broth that comes from the veg and chicken. Root vegetables hold up well, but are super soft.

Whole Beets placed in a crockpot; I like to make a hibiscus tea to pour over them. Cook for about five to six hours on medium. Very tasty borscht like soup.

Pork Shoulder placed in crockpot; I like to use chipotle peppers to season, or pasilla chilies that are less spicy for the consumer. Fill pot a with about a cup of water or chicken stock. Let it cook for five to six hours on medium heat and the shoulder will become very soft; you can pull it apart easily to make it easier to chew. My cousin likes to cook the pork shoulder in Coca-cola, which makes the meat very tender, but I don't do this since it's not that healthy.

Lovely chicken potato and corn chowder, creamy style with a bit of cream added when you are ready to eat the broth. Same amount of time as listed above.

I like to use Better Than Bullion paste to boost the flavor. You can get organic, Veg, Turkey, Chicken, Beef and low sodium.

I hope these suggestions are helpful.
posted by effluvia at 4:24 PM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]


For Eastern European, I’m finding a lot of recipes for crockpot potato kugel.
posted by FencingGal at 4:52 PM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


The key is to simmer, at a really, really low heat. Many crock pots actually have too high heat, or else need to be filled really full to ensure the temperature doesn't end up too high. If your senior lives alone they may not want to make a full crock pot worth of food. Low in a crock pot is supposed to be around 200*F but that is only 12* less than boiling temperature. Liquid should only come up about a third of the way up the meat. If you add more it will create soup. If you add less though, the temperature might get high enough to toughen the meat instead of tenderize it.

You might want to consider using a lidded roasting pan in the oven and baking it at a temperature below 200*F. Meat only needs to be cooked to 150*F to be safe from trichinosis, and if it is cooked for six hours at that temperature any bacteria will be long dead and the results will be well on their way to being tender enough to cut with a spoon. Even 175*F can give a better result than just under boiling temperature. If getting hot and heavy roasting pans out of the oven is a problem, they can turn the heat off and go away for half an hour before attempting it. The food will stay hot in the pan, but the pan itself will not cause burns if the pot mitt slips.

A pork shoulder roughly hacked off the bone into gobs, several cans of cooked beans, a jar of tomato sauce and a bit of barbeque sauce will turn into a nice pork and beans. If your senior can't face hacking it off the bone it can go in whole but will need to be cooked longer and ripped off the bones and put back in to resume cooking once it gets tender enough to not require a lot of effort to break it into smaller chunks. If you use a slow cooker you have to fill it right up to the rim.

It's better not to cook the shoulder with the skin on or the result will be quite greasy - but if you want to the solution is to add lots and lots of peeled potatoes and vegetables to absorb the grease, or to only have small servings.

The easiest way to make a gravy is to toss the cubed raw meat in flour. Just dump a little flour into the bowl with the cut up meat and stir it around. But you can also make a mixture of flour and water with some salt and flavouring such as onion powder or concentrated boullion in a small measuring cup, stir it up until it's not lumpy and pour that in. If it cooks with a cut of meat or juicy vegetables it turns into a nice sauce. It does need juices to be be coming out of the food, but vegetables like onions contain a lot.

If your senior does not like beans, a pork shoulder or a blade roast can be cooked with baby carrots and pre-cut peeled vegetables like squash or turnip. Potatoes will need to be peeled. Some sorts of frozen vegetables can also be used, depending on their teeth and if the vegetables have skins. So can canned. Canned beets with beef creates a kind of borscht.

Wrapping things in foil ensures that the steam has nowhere to go and the meat isn't reduced to stringy tasteless bits in a delicious sauce. There was a classic recipe your senior may recall where a tough cut of meat was covered in a packet of dry French onion soup mix, and then baked at a low temperature until it was completely tender.

Consider goulash - that's cheap tough beef cooked with tomato sauce, peppers, onions and paprika. You can buy frozen chopped peppers and onions to save on the work, and you can add yogurt instead of sour cream if you are concerned about eating too much animal fat.

Roast a turkey upside down in a lidded roasting pan to ensure it doesn't get so dry that it becomes tough. It won't look pretty on the roasting pan because it will be falling apart.

Another method of cooking things is to use a steamer, again to ensure that the meat doesn't go as high as 212*F. A lidded heat proof bowl standing on a vegetable steamer in a pot of boiling water can turn into a nice bit of stew. The drawback is that you have to watch it and make sure it doesn't boil dry, but the method does ensure a soft meal and works for small quantities. I just use the lid from my ordinary pots on top of a china pudding bowl.

Frozen spinach is a really useful vegetable for people with no teeth, if they like it. It can go in soup, in scrambled eggs, in spaghetti sauce,and in gravy. There's no chopping and no problem with anything that might not cook enough so that it needs to be chewed but it is still a leafy green vegetable and a source of nutrients.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:00 PM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


Butternut squash cooked in a crockpot for about three hours is heavenly. It turns into a delicious orange mush that is excellent with cheddar cheese. Many grocery stores will sell precut cubes that would eliminate prep cutting. Very nutritious.
posted by effluvia at 5:30 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


This sweet potato lentil dish is seasoned in a more Indian style, but it's so good.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:29 AM on December 17, 2023


This is where a pressure cooker or instant pot comes in really handy.
You can make all the stews at about a third of the time, and many don't need any browning because the high heat under pressure creates the Maillard effect. So basically, just chop up the vegetables and the meat, throw them in the cooker, add liquid, spices and herbs and press cook.

Cheaper meat is better for stews. Specially cheeks of pork or beef or shanks and tails of any animal are really delicious cooked like this. Most elder people of European heritage enjoy oxtail stew, or osso buco, or Irish stew, or goulash, as mentioned above.

My dad also loved a curry made with meatballs, for which you don't need a pressure cooker. I didn't think of it then, but here we can buy little frozen meatballs meant for soup in big bags, and I realized just yesterday that they would be genius for old- or young-friendly gravies and curries. I wish I thought of that earlier. I would make the gravy or curry sauce, but you can buy some really good jarred ones.
posted by mumimor at 5:50 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Yeah, a dietician would generally advise ground or paste meat to lower the choking risk, and this is generally what with did when my grandfather lost his teeth/ability to wear dentures and had dysphagia from head and neck radiation treatments.

Something I still do sometimes is make soup that has just chunked chicken cut into it for cooking, and then immersion-blend the whole pot to make just a chicken-thickened soup. This works well for any "creamy" style soup - I make broccoli-cheese soup like this all the time, and a dairy-free and gluten-free creamy chicken that uses chicken, cauliflower, and some potato or instant potato flakes to thicken. I feel like chicken does this better than beef or pork, but I can't say I've tried it a ton with beef or pork either - I could see making a nice pork-base soup either Asian style with soft dumplings or Italian style with pasta.

Also, generally, anything that you can casserole is going to be mushy enough to gum if you use ground protein. You may want to up the liquid content slightly to be sure, but lasagna, any kind of rice-based casserole, the various meat pies. This might be a place to use ground chicken or turkey instead of large pieces. You can also slip mashed beans into a dish like that, both for more substance and to provide more fiber (which he should be supplementing anyway, but wherever you get a chance to provide dietary fiber that's a good add) - chickpeas or white/cannellini beans disappear into stronger flavors.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:38 AM on December 17, 2023 [2 favorites]


If they like Chinese food, how about Ma Po Tofu? You can get it as a shelf-stable sauce, just add the tofu
posted by olopua at 11:06 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]


I have recently found out that, due to people getting food poisoning from using slow cookers improperly - usually by putting frozen food into them - regulations have changed and now require them to produce only higher temperatures. This means that slow cookers will often been incapable of producing soft food.

I definitely recommend ditching the slow cooker and using a lidded roasting pan or casserole dish in the oven, set to a low enough temperature.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:47 PM on January 11


« Older First steps for adding BDSM and Fetish play to sex...   |   How to talk to young kids about cannabis? Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments