October has officially become CROCKTOBER™ at Katahdin Kitchen™.

The temperatures are dropping. The days are getting shorter. Football is on. Hoodies are back. And suddenly, letting dinner cook itself all day seems like one of humanity’s better ideas. Welcome to CROCKTOBER™, a month-long celebration of easy slow-cooker meals, hearty comfort food, soups, game-day favorites and those wonderfully simple dinners you can start in the morning and mostly forget about until you’re hungry. Because sometimes the best dinner plan is:

Plug it in. Toss it in. Come back to something awesome.

To get CROCKTOBER started, here are seven easy crockpot meals worth adding to your fall rotation.

🥕 1. Classic Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Let’s start with the meal that practically announces fall has arrived. Tender beef, potatoes, carrots and onions simmering together in a rich broth is about as classic as crockpot cooking gets. It’s also wonderfully flexible. Add mushrooms, peas, celery or whatever vegetables need rescuing from the refrigerator.

Make it awesome: Serve it with warm crusty bread for soaking up the broth. Nobody should be leaving good gravy behind.

🍗 2. Crockpot Chicken & Gravy

This is the kind of meal that tastes like you spent considerably more time making it than you actually did. Slow-cooked chicken with creamy, savory gravy works beautifully over mashed potatoes, rice, noodles or biscuits. It’s simple, filling and exactly the sort of weeknight comfort food CROCKTOBER was invented to celebrate.

Make it awesome: Add mushrooms or onions to the slow cooker for even more flavor.

🌶️ 3. Slow Cooker Chili

There may be no better crockpot food for a chilly October weekend. Build yours around ground beef, turkey or chicken, then add tomatoes, beans, onions and your favorite seasonings. Prefer your chili mild? Keep it that way. Want some heat? Crank it up. The other great thing about chili is that everybody gets to customize their own bowl. Cheese. Sour cream. Green onions. Corn chips. Avocado. Cornbread. Suddenly dinner has become an event.

Make it awesome: Make extra. Chili is one of those rare foods that may actually be better the next day.

🍜 4. Crockpot Chicken Noodle Soup

There are complicated meals, and then there are meals that simply make you happy. Chicken noodle soup belongs firmly in the second category. Chicken, carrots, celery, onions, herbs and broth slowly cooking together while the house starts smelling ridiculously good? That’s October. Add the noodles toward the end so they don’t spend eight hours transforming themselves into pasta pudding. Nobody requested that culinary breakthrough.

Make it awesome: Serve with warm rolls, biscuits or a grilled cheese sandwich.

🐷 5. Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

This one earns extra Katahdin Kitchen points because one crockpot can become several meals. Cook a pork shoulder low and slow until it practically falls apart. Night one? Pulled-pork sandwiches. Leftovers? Turn them into tacos, quesadillas, nachos, loaded baked potatoes or pizza. That’s not leftovers. That’s meal planning without having to pretend you enjoy meal planning.

Make it awesome: Put out several sauces and toppings and let everyone build their own sandwich.

🧀 6. Crockpot Mac & Cheese

Mac and cheese didn’t exactly need improvement, but making it in a crockpot certainly doesn’t hurt. Creamy, cheesy and built for feeding a crowd, slow-cooker mac and cheese works as an easy dinner, side dish, game-day food or addition to a fall gathering. It’s also the kind of dish where experimenting with different cheeses can completely change the result. Sharp cheddar is the obvious starting point, but Monterey Jack, Gruyère, smoked Gouda or a combination can make things considerably more interesting.

Make it awesome: Set out bacon, breadcrumbs, pulled pork or chopped green onions as toppings.

🥩 7. Slow Cooker Pot Roast

And finally, the heavyweight champion of lazy Sunday dinners. Put a roast in the slow cooker with potatoes, carrots, onions, broth and seasonings in the morning.

Then go do something else. Watch football. Go leaf peeping. Read a book. Take a nap. Debate whether putting up Halloween decorations on October 1 was actually early enough. Several hours later, you’ve got a complete comfort-food dinner waiting for you.

Make it awesome: Don’t forget the gravy. This isn’t the moment to suddenly start showing restraint.

🍂 CROCKTOBER™ Is Just Getting Started

These seven meals are only the beginning. Throughout October, Katahdin Kitchen™ will be digging into more crockpot recipes, soups, comfort foods, game-day meals, kitchen finds and ridiculously easy ways to get something good on the table without spending the entire evening cooking. We’ll also be taking some of these CROCKTOBER favorites and giving them their own step-by-step recipes, variations and ideas for turning leftovers into entirely different meals. Because making good food doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes you just need a slow cooker, a handful of ingredients and enough patience to leave the lid alone.

Plug it in. Toss it in. Come back to something awesome.

Welcome to CROCKTOBER™. 🍲🍂