38 Ground Beef Recipes to Make in Your Slow Cooker
Updated: Jan. 12, 2024
Serve up a satisfying supper with one of these cozy ground beef Crockpot recipes. With everything from lasagna to meat loaf, you'll never want to cook ground beef any other way.
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Stamp-of-Approval Spaghetti Sauce
This hearty sauce made with both ground beef and sausage is great on any shape pasta, not just spaghetti. It freezes well, too! Just put cooled sauce in a freezer-safe container, cover and freeze for up to three months. Make sure to thaw it in the refrigerator overnight before reheating on the stove.
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California Tamale Pie
This delicious ground beef and cornmeal combo has the taste and texture of tamales, but takes a lot less time to make. Top with cheese, sour cream and jalapenos for a full-flavored meal. If you’re going beyond ground beef, we have more slow-cooker beef recipes for soul-warming meals.
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Slow-Cooker Sloppy Joes
A classic sloppy joes recipe made with ground beef, onions and green pepper is the epitome of Crockpot cooking. If you want to make it a little lighter, use ground turkey. In addition to soft rolls, have extras like sweet pickles, onions and more for toppings.
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Slow-Cooker Quinoa Chili
Quinoa adds extra protein and nutrients to this ground beef and bean chili. Want to make it vegetarian? Omit the beef! Amp up the spice if you like things even hotter, and keep cooling sour cream along with other toppings close by.
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Beef & Rice Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Making cabbage rolls in the slow cooker means the only real work you have to put in is rolling the beef and rice mixture in crisp-tender cabbage leaves. Love that cruciferous vegetable? We have a lot more cabbage recipes for your next meal.
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Spicy Beef Vegetable Stew
The only thing you have to do with this recipe is brown the meat for a few minutes before dumping it, along with frozen vegetables and a few other pantry staples, into the slow cooker. Serve with cornbread or crusty French bread.
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Slow-Cooker Enchiladas
You can use either flour or corn tortillas in this layered slow-cooker enchilada recipe. To make it even easier, mix in enchilada sauce instead of the tomatoes, chiles and spices with the ground beef. Once you’ve mastered this, you can make other slow-cooker Mexican foods, like tostadas, chicken mole and more.
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Slow-Cooker Spaghetti & Meatballs
The best meatballs are held together by breadcrumbs and a little bit of egg. When you put these beefy meatballs in the slow cooker, they become even more flavorful and tender. Serve with penne or ziti, or any pasta shape. Leftovers? Meatball subs, of course!
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Cincinnati Chili Dogs
You don’t just cook the chili in the slow cooker, but the hot dogs too! Add them toward the end of cooking so they become infused with the sweet Cincinnati chili flavors. Then ladle a lot more chili over the dogs in buns, top with onion and cheese, and watch them quickly disappear.
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Corny Chili
Dump everything in the slow cooker in the morning, and come home to a richly flavored beef chili that deserves all the best toppings, like cheese, onion, sour cream and jalapenos. Check out some of our other slow-cooker chili recipes for more ideas.
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Meat Loaf Burgers
To make these tasty burgers, layer beef patties over onions in the slow cooker and let them cook for hours in a flavorful tomato sauce. All of it—sauce, onions and burger—goes right on the bun. Have another pound of meat waiting in the wings? Use it in one of our other best ground beef recipes.
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Spicy Goulash
This easy goulash recipe needs nothing more than a few pantry staples and spices, like canned tomatoes, beans, cumin and chili powder. You don’t even cook the macaroni first—it goes in dry and comes out delicious.
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Sloppy Joe Tater Tot Casserole
Kids and adults will love this easy slow-cooker casserole. Want to make it a more balanced meal? Serve with fresh vegetables like carrots and celery sticks or a big leafy salad.
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Peppered Meat Loaf
By putting big potato wedges in the bottom of the slow cooker before this hearty meat loaf, the wedges absorb some of the flavor from the meat and sauce. If you don’t want to add sausage, consider plain ground pork or more beef if it’s what you have.
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Cuban Picadillo
There are many variations of picadillo, a Cuban ground beef dish with tomatoes, spices, capers, olives and raisins. But this one is the easiest because it all goes into a slow cooker for a long stew. Serve it with rice, a nice salad, and if you want to get really traditional, these simple air-fryer plantains.
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Spicy Montana Chili
When you need a chili with some kick, add more jalapenos; if you want it mild, use less. This is a thick chili for cold days, especially when served with cornbread still warm from the oven.
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Two-Step Stroganoff
The slow cooker is also great for hot days when you don’t want to heat up the kitchen. Beef Stroganoff sounds like it should be fancy, but this simple ground beef dish can be made in the slow cooker for ease. It’s a great ground beef Crockpot recipe for potlucks and other gatherings.
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Italian Stuffed Peppers
When you make stuffed peppers in a slow cooker, it allows more time for the tender ground beef filling to come together and the flavors to meld. The added mozzarella cheese gives the dish a slightly Italian slant (but you can always leave it out).
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Slow-Cooked Enchilada Dinner
Build layers of flour tortillas, a spicy ground beef mixture and cheese in the slow cooker, then let it do its thing for about two hours. Make a criss-crossed foil liner so it’s easier to lift the enchilada dish out of the slow cooker and cut it into servings.
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Italian Meatball Subs
Skip the spaghetti altogether and make meatballs for subs and sandwiches. These meatballs are made with ground beef and sausage, plus a variety of seasonings, and they make a superb stuffing for Italian rolls or crusty bread.
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Easy Chow Mein
This easy version of chow mein takes only a few ingredients, most probably already stocked in your pantry, and a few hours in the Crockpot. It freezes well, so you can get a few meals done in one fell swoop. Need more quick and easy dinner ideas? Check out more recipes with ground beef for inspiration.
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Beefy Cabbage Bean Stew
This stew is more like a veggie-filled chili, with an entire bag of shredded cabbage added to the slow cooker along with ground beef, beans, salsa, tomatoes and more. Top it just like chili with cheddar cheese, sour cream and jalapenos.
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Bacon Cheeseburger Soup
Cheeseburger soup is absolutely one of the most delicious things to come out of the slow cooker. The crisp bacon topping is gilding the lily a bit, but just like a great burger, it’s welcome. Like other ground beef Crockpot recipes, you can easily swap in ground turkey or chicken for this soup.
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Slow-Cooker Spanish Rice
This one pot meal has everything: Rice, ground beef, tomatoes and lots of Tex-Mex flavor. Serve with tortillas or lettuce cups for filling and folding.
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Fall Vegetable Sloppy Joes
Turn ground beef sloppy joes into a full meal with grated vegetables, like parsnips, carrots and butternut squash. Even the most finicky eaters won’t know the difference, especially when everything is topped with shredded cheese and served on a soft bun.
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Meatball Cabbage Rolls
Stuffed cabbage by another name, these savory meat-filled cabbage rolls cook low and slow in a lightly spiced tomato sauce. All you need is some delicious mashed potatoes and fresh green beans on the side for a perfect comfort food meal.
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Cowboy Calico Beans
This Crockpot ground beef recipe with four different kinds of beans and a tangy sauce is the perfect party staple. After a few hours in the slow cooker, ketchup, cider vinegar, mustard and brown sugar really help amp up the flavor.
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Ground Beef Spinach Alfredo Lasagna
Use no-cook lasagna noodles for this hearty slow-cooker pasta dish; they won’t get too soft as it cooks. The two sauces, both alfredo and tomato, come together beautifully in this rich and hearty layered pasta recipe.
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Meatballs in Honey Buffalo Sauce
A sweet and spicy meatball recipe will turn heads at your next potluck or party. Serve it alongside other buffet favorites like crudites and dips, or create meatball sliders with small dinner rolls.
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Spicy Stuffed Banana Peppers
If you can’t find banana peppers, or aren’t willing to test your luck finding the not-so-spicy ones, use Bianca or bell peppers instead. The ground beef, sausage and quinoa filling tastes great in all of them!
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Zippy Spaghetti Sauce
Leftovers? Simply ladle the thick and hearty ground beef sauce over garlic bread the next day, top with a little cheese and pop in the oven or toaster oven. Or freeze it: This sauce will keep up to three months in an airtight freezer-safe container.
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Chili Mac
If you want to kick up the heat in this chili mac, use chile-spiked beans and top with fresh or pickled jalapeno and hot pepper cheese. Want to turn it into soup? Simply add a can of beef broth.
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Italian Beef Vegetable Soup
This is the kind of soup that’s as good in the summer as it is in the winter, using whatever fresh vegetables you have around. It’s great with carrots, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and celery, but you can mix and match to your liking. Serve with fluffy dinner rolls or flaky biscuits.
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Moo Shu Lettuce Cups
A riff on the classic Chinese takeout dish, this super easy version has all the flavors of moo shu pork but with ground beef. To serve, use crisp lettuce leaves or traditional Chinese pancakes or even flour tortillas.
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Meat Loaf from the Slow Cooker
Variations in meat loaf generally come down to the binder (in this case saltines and egg), the seasonings and the sauce. The sauce for this one has a touch of nutmeg. Make sure to use the foil “cross” in the bottom of the pot to lift the loaf out with ease.
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Potluck Enchilada Meatballs
Use taco seasoning and enchilada sauce for these easy and inexpensive meatballs. They’re particularly great for potlucks. Have a stack of corn or flour tortillas on the side so guests can make their own meatball tacos.
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Slow-Cooker Pizza
This isn’t exactly pizza (there’s no crust), but it is a clever way to get pizza flavors, from the sauce to the cheese and pepperoni, in a slow-cooker noodle casserole. Just like pizza, add any of your favorite toppings, such as crumbled sausage, olives and green peppers.
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Originally Published: August 14, 2018
