Slow Cooker Amish Potatoes and Green Beans

This Slow Cooker potato and green bean dish is pure Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse cooking — humble ingredients, hours of gentle simmering, and a smoky, savory payoff that’s so much bigger than the four ingredients suggest. You load up the Slow Cooker, walk away, and come back to tender potatoes and beans soaking in the most incredible smoky broth. It’s the kind of set-it-and-forget-it dinner that makes the whole house smell amazing all day long.

Why You’ll Love It

• Just 4 ingredients — potatoes, green beans, smoked pork, and broth, nothing fancy required
• Truly set-it-and-forget-it — load the Slow Cooker in the morning and dinner’s ready by evening
• Big smoky flavor from simple stuff — the smoked pork does all the seasoning work for you
• Forgiving and low-maintenance — cut the potatoes a little big or small, it still turns out great
• One-pot, minimal cleanup — everything cooks together in the Slow Cooker, broth and all

Ingredient Notes

The potatoes: Small yellow ones, Yukon golds if your store labels them that way, though honestly I’ve used red potatoes in a pinch and nobody complained, not even my son-in-law who complains about everything including, once, memorably, the temperature of a lake. You want something that holds its shape-ish. Not a russet. Russets fall apart on you and turn the whole broth cloudy, which isn’t the end of the world but isn’t what we’re going for here.

Green beans: Fresh, please, if you can manage it. Frozen works in an emergency (I’ve done it, don’t let anyone tell you they haven’t) but the texture gets a little sadder, a little more resigned.

And the pork: This is where people get opinions. Ruthann always used ham hocks, the real thing, bone and all, and let it just fall apart into the broth over the day. I’ve drifted toward smoked pork shoulder because it’s easier to find where I live now and gives you actual bites of meat instead of just flavor and a bone to gnaw on later while standing over the sink, which — I’ll admit — I still sort of enjoy doing when nobody’s watching.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds small yellow potatoes, scrubbed, cut into chunks (1 1/2 inches, though I never actually measure, I just eyeball it)
• 1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed (halved or whole, doesn’t matter much)
• 12 ounces smoked pork (hocks, shoulder, or thick bacon, whatever you land on)
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth, give or take

Instructions

Start with the potatoes in the bottom of your Slow Cooker — a 5 or 6 quart one, whatever you’ve got, mine’s this avocado-green monstrosity I inherited and refuse to replace. Spread them out so they’re not all piled in one corner; I did that once, years back, and ended up with mush on one side and undercooked lumps on the other, and there was a whole dinner where I just quietly redistributed potatoes onto people’s plates hoping nobody noticed.

Green beans go on top of the potatoes — mostly on top, not stirred in, so they steam a little instead of drowning the whole time. Then the pork over that, spread around so every scoop later on has a fair shot at some.

Pour the broth over everything. Not all the way to the top — you want it mostly covering the vegetables, not swimming. This part I genuinely think you develop a feel for over time; the first few times I made this I drowned everything and the beans came out this dull army green that just looked tired.

Lid on. Cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours (or on HIGH for 3.5 to 4 hours if you’re in a hurry). I am, for the record, a low-and-slow person. Always have been. Roger’s the opposite — man wants dinner in forty minutes flat — and we’ve had this argument about slow cookers for going on thirty years now and neither of us has budged an inch.

When it’s done, potatoes should give easily to a fork, beans soft but not disintegrated. Taste the broth. Taste a potato, actually, while you’re at it — I always do, standing right there at the counter with the lid half off, steam in my face. If the pork wasn’t salty enough on its own, a little salt and pepper here, but go easy — traditionally you’d let the meat do that work for you, and I mostly still try to.

Stir gently from the bottom, just enough to bring some of that smoky broth and meat up over everything else. Don’t go at it too hard or you’ll turn your potatoes to mash, which — again — speaking from experience.

Variations

My daughter Beth does something a little different — she’ll parboil a smoked turkey wing separately and use a cup of that water in place of some of the broth, says it deepens things without adding more fat. I’ve tried it. It’s good. I still mostly don’t bother, because it’s one more pot to wash and at some point in your life you decide certain shortcuts are worth the tiny loss in flavor. That’s just where I’ve landed.

If you want the beans to stay brighter, snappier, hold off and toss them in during the last couple hours instead of dumping everything in at once — though I’ll be honest, half the time I forget to do this and just throw everything in together anyway, because who’s really tracking hours that closely on a Tuesday.

Storage

It keeps in the fridge four, five days, and honestly gets better by day two once everything’s had a chance to sit together. I have absolutely forgotten a container of this in the back of the fridge for going on two weeks before — behind the pickles, where things go to be forgotten — so don’t be me. Reheat low and slow on the stove, splash of broth or water if it’s thickened up, which it will.

A Few Last Thoughts

Serve it in shallow bowls, broth and all, with something to sop it up — a crusty bread, rolls, whatever you’ve got that’s soft enough to soak. Roasted chicken alongside if you’re feeling like a real dinner, or just this on its own some nights, which honestly might be my favorite way to eat it. I don’t know that Ruthann would recognize what I’ve done to her recipe over the years — swapped meats, gotten lazy about the parboiling thing, added things she’d probably raise an eyebrow at — but the smell’s the same. That part I never touched.