Okay, so you may have noticed that my 7-day slow cooker challenge didn’t exactly go to plan, in that I only managed to last for four days and my last three planned meals never quite made it onto my site. I think this happened for a couple of reasons – slow cooking, for me, is something I do to make my life more convenient, and forcing myself to use my slow cooker to a schedule just didn’t work. Also, one of the meals I planned was lasagne, and I’m not going to lie, I was really apprehensive about it. We LOVE lasagne in this house, but I always bake it the normal way, and attempting to slow cook it seemed a bit like fixing something which isn’t broken.

Anyway, I had a little slow cooker break after failing but I’m back to using it again today and it’s a super simple, super tasty beef and broccoli recipe that I’m making today:

Slow Cooker Sesame Beef and Brocolli

Slow Cooker Sesame Beef and Broccoli Print Prep time 5 mins Cook time 4 hours 30 mins Total time 4 hours 35 mins A slow cooked beef recipe with a simple Asian-inspired sauce. Author: Jayne Crammond Recipe type: Slow Cooker Cuisine: Asian Serves: 4 Ingredients 240ml/1 cup beef stock

120ml/ ½ cup soy sauce

¼ cup erythritol (substitute with brown sugar if you don't need a low sugar recipe)

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 Tbsp sesame oil

900g/2lb stewing beef

1 head of broccoli

4 Tbsp corn starch

4 Tbsp water

Sesame seeds Instructions Place the stock, soy sauce, erytritol/brown sugar, chopped garlic and sesame oil into the slow cooker pot and mix well Add the beef into the pot and mix well to coat Cook on LOW for 4 hours After 4 hours, mix the corn starch and water together and add to the pot, stirring well to thicken Add the chopped broccoli and stir Cook for a further 30 minutes on HIGH, or until broccoli is soft Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve with rice or noodles, or a side of your choice. 3.5.3208

This was such a simple recipe but has turned out to be a real crowd-pleaser with the family. It’s exactly the kind of ‘chuck it all in’ recipe which makes me love slow cooking, and offered so much flavour for such an easy-to-make dish. The sauce was salty and savoury, and thickened to almost a gravy consistency once the cornstarch was added, and cooking the broccoli in the sauce added an amazing layer of flavour. The best part of this meal is that, when you factor in a portion of rice, it came in at just 453 calories per portion, which is amazingly low!

Beef is probably my favourite meat for slow cooking as you can buy the really cheap cuts but end up with a tender, flavourful dish which is low calorie, high protein and doesn’t cost the earth – basically the Holy Grail of cooking for a family! Let me know if you make this yourself, I’d love to know if you were as pleased with the results as we were.