I Snack on This Slow Cooker 'Grazing Soup' All Day Long in the Winter

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There are days when cooking up three individual meals and finding snacks in between feels like too much work. When I need to lighten my cooking workload, my go-to move is to reduce the amount of “new” meals I make in a day. For my household, that would be this slow cooker grazing soup. 

Crock-Pot SCCPVL610-S-A 6-Quart Cook & Carry Programmable Slow Cooker

$69.99 at Amazon

$69.99 at Amazon

What to expect from a grazing soup

The point of a grazing soup (or stew) is that it’s filling, simple, and something that you can make as a great big batch for snacking on throughout the day. You could do this in a large pot or Dutch oven on the stove, but I prefer using my slow cooker because it’s more hands-off, and once it’s finished, the cooker automatically clicks over to “keep warm” for as many hours as I want. It’s certainly safer than keeping my stove flame on for six hours.

Grazing soup ingredients stand up to long durations of low heat. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

The key to a grazing soup is choosing ingredients that don’t deteriorate over the course of the day. You can use my recipe below, but if you’re creating your own version of a grazing soup, consider the types of ingredients you’re using. Carrots, celery, many cruciferous vegetables (like cauliflower and kale), beans, and bitter greens are good candidates that hold up in liquid. Potatoes can work too, but some potatoes stay together better than others. Opt for waxy potatoes (red potatoes are a good choice) because they have a lower starch content and hold their shape in liquid. 

How to keep it interesting 

If eating the same soup all day sounds like a bore, you can still reap the benefits of not cooking multiple times while adding a bit of variety. You can do this with pre-made accoutrements or with (what I’ve decided to call) soup evolution. 

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Adding pre-made accoutrements might be a scoop of leftover pasta or rice you didn’t finish from earlier in the week. If you keep hard boiled eggs in the fridge, slice one of those into your bowl. I often keep Trader Joe’s frozen turkey meatballs in my freezer. They’re fully cooked so maybe a half hour before my next graze, I’ll drop a few of those into the soup to heat up. 

Soup evolution is adding a new bulk ingredient to your grazing soup as it begins to run out. Halfway through the day, after the soup has decreased in volume, I might dump in a can of chickpeas—aquafaba and all. Maybe before dinner, you add a bag of frozen pelmeni, or a half-cup of raw pastina to the stew and it absorbs the rest of the broth to become a thicker dish. The soup essentially changes over from one major component to another, while still keeping a percentage of its former self. 

Lately, I’ve enjoyed this red lentil soup with a chickpea evolution in the evening. Enjoy your grazing soup early and often throughout the day.

Red Lentil Slow Cooker Grazing Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

• ½ onion, minced

• 2 waxy, medium-sized potatoes, cubed

• ¾ cup chopped carrots

• ¾ cup dry red lentils

• 2 cups lacinato kale, de-stemmed and roughly chopped

• 4 cups chicken broth

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon MSG

• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder

• ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper powder

• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

• 1 can organic chickpeas (optional), not drained

1. In true lazy slow cooker soup fashion, dump all of the ingredients, except the lemon juice and the can of chickpeas, into the cooker. 

2. Cook the soup for 2 hours on high heat, stirring occasionally. Click the cooker over to the warm setting for the rest of the day. Just before eating your first bowl, stir in the lemon juice. 

3. If you notice your soup is running low and you don’t want the party to end, stir in the can of chickpeas with its liquid. 

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