Crockpot Ham, Green Beans and Potatoes

A healthy recipe from Green Beans and Potatoes - Despite the amount of time in the slow cooker, this crockpot ham, green beans and potatoes recipe is an easy meal to make. All the ingredients are combined in the crockpot and cooked for six hours making this a perfect dinner to prepare in the morning and have ready during the dinner hour.  This ham and green bean recipe for a quick and easy meal that can be made any day of the week. It will have everything you need for a complete meal, starch, vegetable and protein, which means you won’t have to add a salad or side onto it.

One thing you might notice about this comfort meal is that it doesn’t include any salt or pepper. This is because ham has a lot of sodium in it already, and during the lengthy cooking of this crockpot recipe, the salt leaches out of the meat and seasons everything in the crockpot. If desired, taste this stew recipe at this end of cooking and season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Other ways to flavour this hearty meal would be to replace the water with a tasty liquid, like low-sodium chicken stock or vegetable stock. You could even replace part of the water with leftover white wine, which would add complex acidity to this crock pot recipe. Wine tends to sour once opened, and therefore isn’t as enjoyable to drink. Incorporating it into home cooked meals, like this crockpot ham, green bean and potato recipe is an excellent way of using up the wine you wouldn’t drink otherwise.

Crock pot meals are all about easy preparation, and this one only requires chopping potatoes, green beans, ham and onions. How to cut the potatoes or green beans, which means you cut them into large or small chunks as desired. You could even leave the green beans whole if you prefer. Green beans don’t require any complicated techniques to prepare. All you have to do is remove the stem end, which you can do with a knife or snap off with your fingers. If you decide to cut your beans into smaller pieces, a pair of kitchen shears is a quick and easy way of cutting a lot of beans at one time. Consider substituting the green beans in this good comfort recipe with another variety of crisp green vegetable, like Asian long beans or broccoli. If you decide to add asparagus or enjoy a crisper vegetable with your meal, simply add the vegetables later in the cooking process.

This ham and green bean recipe wouldn’t be complete without the addition of hearty cubes of potato, and they sop up all the ham juices brilliantly. If you would like to promote extra nutrition in this crock pot dinner recipe, you can leave the skins on the potatoes rather than peeling them. The skins will add extra fibre to your dinner, which is an incredibly important nutrient that people don’t get enough of. A high fibre diet will promote satiety so that you don’t snack later, maintain an even blood sugar and help with healthy digestion. Many think that it is difficult to get a healthy meal on the table, but crock pot recipes, like this one, are an excellent way of getting plenty of vegetables and satisfying dishes into your diet.