Here’s another great slow cooker recipe from my freezer meals arsenal. It froze fantastically and was just delicious out of the crockpot. The recipe is from this completely random cookbook called Crock Pot Cookbook: 440 Slow Cooker Recipes that I got on my Kindle for $.99. It was my first Kindle purchase, and it doesn’t even seem to exist on Amazon anymore. The directions are wacky and inconsistent, and it just feels like the kind of hodgepodge cookbook the local ladies’ auxilary would put together for a fundraiser (3 different recipes for Beef Stroganoff? Is that really necessary? No notes on number of servings?). But I credit it because it was the guide I used while first determining how long to cook different dishes in my slow cooker. And it really is a very straightforward, decently flavorful dish. But it’s also the kind of dinner that I love because it lends itself wildly to improvisation. You can season the meat however you like for a spicy dinner, a more Mediterranean dinner with pitas, etc.

I tweaked some of the amounts and also divided this dish into 2 freezer meals for us. The freezing directions are also my addition.

Ingredients:
2 lbs flank steak
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro
2 garlic cloves, minced
1.5 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp each salt and pepper
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
Flour tortillas and fixins (sour cream, guacamole, cheddar, rice, etc.) **For serving, not for freezing

Cut the flank steak into 6 portions. Put 3 portions of meat into 2 Ziploc freezer bags. Divide the onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, cilantro, garlic, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper, and diced tomatoes between the two bags. Write the directions on each bag and freeze.

When ready to cook, thaw the bag. Empty the entire contents into the slow cooker and cook on low for 8-10 hours or high 4-5 hours. It will look like this:

Shred the meat with 2 forks. It’s a lot like barbacoa, but without the steaming process.

Serve with fixins.

**NOTE: We have “Fajita Night” all the time at our house, but ever since I gave Adam a panini press for Christmas a few years ago we really should call it Burrito Night. It’s one of our absolute favorites. From some of the other freezer meals I’ve experimented with (and not yet posted), you could sub in a lot of different meats with this same basic recipe idea–meat, seasonings, peppers and onions. But only if you like your meat shredded. That was the thing I learned about all these slow cooker dinners that aren’t stew-based like I used to make when I first started cooking. It will cook the meat until it’s falling apart, so I learned the hard way not to use it for dishes that I wanted served whole.