Cold days make a long cooking project sound appealing until there is still chopping, stirring, and cleanup waiting at dinnertime. These 17 slow cooker recipes lean on long, mostly hands-off cooking for soups, roasts, shredded meats, meatballs, and full casseroles. The mix ranges from Italian Wedding Soup and German Pot Roast to Hatch chile chicken, birria, and beef stroganoff, so the slow cooker can handle very different kinds of cold-weather dinners. Most need only a short prep window before several hours of cooking, which leaves the kitchen smelling like dinner without keeping someone tied to the stove.

Honey-Garlic Meatballs in a thick red sauce are being stirred with a wooden spoon in a white ceramic pot.
Slow Cooker Honey-Garlic Meatballs. Photo credit: The Bite Stuff.

Originally published on fooddrinklife.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

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