"Steamed" Artichokes

Like most of us, the extent of most people's "artichoke knowledge" is the kind that come in the jar and we make spinach and artichoke dip out of!  I'm here to tell you, there is more to life than jarred artichokes!  FRESH ones are seriously delicious!

Growing up, my friend Tammy's mom used to make these all the time.  We used to sit around the dinner table and dip our artichoke leaves into some yummy ranch dressing.  These are a great "snack" when you're craving something to eat, but don't want to waste calories on something not good for you!

It takes literally nothing to make these.  You just put them in your crock, add a bit of water so they can "steam" and let them cook!  That's it!

"Steamed" Artichokes

Ingredients:
2-4 Artichokes (depending on the size of your crock-I used a 6.5 Quart)
1/2 cup water

Directions:

Place your artichokes in your crock and pour in the water.

Cook on LOW for 7-8 hours or on HIGH for 3.5-4 hours.

Now, here's how I serve them....

Cut the stem off like so...

Simply pull the leaves off one at a time.  

At the end where you tore it off, there is a bit of "meat."  You just scrape it off with your teeth.

We like to dip ours in some ranch dressing. Just a tiny dab will do ya!

Yummy, Yummy!

Eventually you'll get to a point where the leaves are very tiny and you'll have a pile of leaves to discard like this...

You're not done yet!  There's more goodness to come!  Pull the rest of the end off with the leaves like this.

(The part on the left is the rest of the tiny leaves.  The part on the right is the piece you're going to eat!)

There's some "hair" that you need to scrape out with a spoon, so scoop it out gently.

Now, enjoy the last nice hunk of "meaty" artichoke!!!!

As you can see, Gavin REALLY enjoyed the artichoke!!!!!