A low carb ground beef eggplant casserole that bakes in a casserole crock pot. It has a hamburger crust topped with layers of eggplant, tomato, and cheese.
Disclaimer: The casserole crock pot was purchased by me and all opinions are my own. I am not affiliated in any way with the Crock-Pot company.
Do you love simple and inexpensive low carb casseroles? I certainly do and lately I just don’t have a lot of time for cooking. That’s why I recently bought a Casserole Crock Pot so I could do more easy low carb cooking.
To try out the new crock pot, I made a ground beef eggplant casserole in it. As many of you regular readers know, blogging is something I do part-time to support the low carb community and keep track of recipes I’ve tried. I’m a busy working mom as well.
I put in over forty hours a week at my real job working as an engineer in a a power plant and come home to a very active two year old daughter. If that isn’t enough, I’ve also been spending time over the last month helping my husband promote his wrestling business, MarcAurele Wrestling.
Over ten years ago, my husband started his own youth wrestling club so our son had a place to train locally year round.
Although my husband was very into wrestling as a youth, even winning a world title in Greco Roman in middle school and going to a Division I college on full scholarship, he stopped wrestling completely about a month before we got married.
This crock pot ground beef eggplant casserole is a modification of my hamburger pie with eggplant recipe. I basically just doubled the recipe and slow cooked it in the casserole crock pot instead of the oven. This allowed me to run errands for a few hours and not have to babysit the oven.
It wasn’t until our son showed an interest in wrestling, when he was in first grade, that my husband decided to return to the sport as a coach.
Our son had a very good wrestling career, but now that he’s in college, he has decided to concentrate on his academics as he is majoring in Engineering which requires a lot of studying to keep a high grade point average.
Wrestling did give my son a lot of discipline and confidence as well as teaching him that hard work does pay off. He is now in the Honor’s program at college and just got inducted honor society for being in the top of his class going into his sophomore year.
His future is looking very bright and I expect him to be very successful at whatever he choses to do!
Even though our son no longer wrestles on any team, my husband has recently been putting in a lot of time at his wrestling gym to make sure all the youth wrestlers in his club will have the support they need to be successful in life past their wrestling career just like our son.
To help his wrestlers succeed in school, my husband is opening up a new after school tutoring program at the wrestling gym.
The story was recently featured on our local Fox news channel and the grand opening is expected to make the news again. A video and article on the tutoring program is available on the FoxCT.com website. As you can see, we have been really busy!
Now on to the recipe…
The great thing about this recipe is that you don’t have to brown the ground beef. I also didn’t pre-cook the eggplant like I did in the original recipe. I just salted the cut eggplant and let it sit for a bit and then mixed it with the olive oil before putting it in the crock-pot.
I had no idea that casserole crock pots existed until I started shopping for a slow cooker. The 9×13 crock is the standard casserole size and you can even put it in the oven to brown the top of the casserole if you wish. The best thing is that once your casserole is done, you can keep it warm by leaving it in the slow cooker on the warm setting.
This is the first crock pot that I’ve owned that has the programmable feature. I debated whether I really wanted this feature, but opted to try it.
I’m so glad I bought the programmable model because the shallow size of the casserole dish means that most recipes are done in only 3-4 hours. Once the cooking time you set has past, the crock pot automatically goes to the warm mode.
This is a great feature when you are out and running late as you won’t have to worry about your meal getting overcooked!
I have also found that this crock pot is great for keeping food warm at parties. I made a skillet dish for a recent get together and put the food in this casserole crock pot to keep it warm for several hours. This new appliance is going to get some good use over the holidays!
I really like the versatility of this new crock pot. You could even bake the casserole in the oven first and then put it in the holder for keeping it warm during serving.
I’m going to make some room in my kitchen storage closet so I can look into getting another crock pot or two. There is a new model that lets you brown the meat in the crock pot and then add the rest of the ingredients to slow cook. The one bowl idea for slow cooking is something that sounds great!
How many crock pots do you own? I have three slow cookers, a dip crock and a new lunch size crock pot for warming food at work. One of the slow cookers is a 3-in-1 crock pot, but I still only consider that a single slow cooker.
Crock Pot Ground Beef Eggplant Casserole
Ingredients
- 2 cups eggplant cubed
- dash salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tsp mustard
- 28 ounces canned diced tomatoes drained
- 16 ounces canned tomato sauce
- 2 cups mozzarella cheese grated
- 2 Tablespoons parsley
- 1 tsp oregano
Instructions
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Sprinkle cut eggplant with salt and let sit in a colander for about 30 minutes. Remove into bowl and stir in olive oil.
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Combine ground beef, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and mustard. Press on bottom and sides of a 9x13 crock pot pan.
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Top meat with eggplant.
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Spread tomatoes and sauce over eggplant and sprinkle with remaining ingredients.
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Slow cook for 3-4 hours on low or high 2-3 hours.
Recipe Notes
Makes 12 servings
Nutrition per serving: 5.7g net carbs
Monica says
No Comment but I do have a question. Can you use ground turkey instead of ground beef?
Lisa says
Yes. It works fine in the recipe.
Pamela says
Recipe calls for grated mozzarella, but the photos show sliced provolone. I suppose you could use either…
Lisa says
You can use any type of cheese you’d like. Both work well.
Regina says
I made the original the other day and wondered at the time if I shouldn’t have made t in the crockpot. Lol! We liked the pie version but I did have w little issue with quite a bit of extra liquid forming on top. So I made a note to self to put this in a self draining pan. Because I will be making it again. It is yummy!
Lisa says
Great idea with the self draining pan!
Joan McCallum says
Seems the casserole crock.pot is not available outside USA..all can find on net is old fashion styles.
Lisa says
That’s too bad. Maybe they will be available in other areas soon.
Mary says
Sounds yummy, I’m going to try it in my standard crockpot as I don’t have the casserole crockpot!
Lisa says
It should cook in any crock pot, but regular size may just take a bit longer.
Tina says
Just found this recipe and I too only have regular crock pots. When you say it would take a bit longer, any idea how long?
Lisa says
Not much. It will just be deeper so may take a little longer (maybe an hour).
Angelina says
I made this yesterday, but even after reading the (basic) recipe, I added in a generous amount of freshly chopped parsley, and a few cloves of finely minced garlic into my lean ground sirloin. Since I wanted to make this a more ‘filling’ dish without adding in too many additional calories & carbs….I added an entire bag of frozen ‘California Blend’ vegetables, and also about 8 ozs. of freshly sliced mushrooms (for flavor). My family loved it! With all due respect to the author of this recipe, the (original) recipe sounded pretty bland to me. Personally, I was not even crazy about the final result. Besides that, the comments were all about your new slow cooker. I have a slow cooker which is older. My mom used it when I was growing up, so I love using it. I read that the new slow cookers cook ‘too hot’, but my old one cooks ‘perfectly’ every time. Has anyone made this dish yet? How did they like it? Personally, I thought it was bland….even after I attempted to enhance it.
Lisa says
This was actually a redo of a baked casserole to test out how it would come out slow cooking in a crock instead. It is a basic recipe that can be adjusted to suit different tastes. I served it to a group of hungry guys and they loved it. Your additions sound great!
KalynsKitchen says
Good morning! Just letting you know that I just featured this recipe in my 25 Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb Recipes round-up. Hope a lot of my readers will come over here and check it out!
And I have the casserole slow cooker too, love it!
Lisa says
Thank you! Will give your round-up a share 🙂
Anonymous says
“How many crock pots do you own? ”
I have 5 and I love them all. 2 QT 3 QT 4.5 Qt 5 Qt 6.5 QT
Today I decided to try rendering beef tallow, had some fat left over from a delicious beef brisket that I had trimmed, about a pound or so, put it all into my smallest Crock, on high, and simmered it till all I had left were “cracklins”, and they were so good after cooling a little on paper towels and sprinkled with seasoned salt.
Linda says
Very intrigued by this new appliance.How do you convert regular oven temps and cooking times to this appliance? Most casseroles bake at 350 degrees. So is that low or high? Does it come with owners manual that gives you all that info?
Lisa says
My crock pot came with a manual and a recipe booklet with sample casseroles. Most of the recipes are done in the crock within 2-7 hours on low. The longer cooking times can be done faster on a high setting. There isn’t a clear cut way to convert recipes, though.