Slow Cooker Paella Plus Easy Clean-up with Scotch-Brite® Scrubbing Dish Cloths

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Recently our family went on its first epic international vacation. We stayed in hotels and ate out for almost every meal. While it was great fun and adventure, once we returned we were all happy to revisit our favorite homemade dishes.

The first thing I made was an old standby – delicious Slow Cooker Paella. This dish cooks itself, obvs, and it fills the house with the mouthwatering smell of meat, vegetables, and savory rice. By the time it’s done cooking I usually find someone hovering over the pot, asking “Can we eat now?!”

The only problem with this dish is the mess I make! It requires everything you see in the photo above: multiple pots and pans and utensils and lots of chopping. I usually cover our small kitchen with bits of food and dirty dishes and then groan when it’s time to clean up.

This time, though, I made sure to set up a few strategies to keep things neat during the prepping process:

• Clean up as I go with Scotch-Brite® Scrubbing Dish Cloths.
• Use a garbage bowl

These two steps made clean-up much easier than my usual method, which is make a huge mess and then take 30 minutes later to wash and scrub and rinse and scrape.

Making the Meal

Slow Cooker Paella

Ingredients
1 tbs olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 bell peppers, diced (can be any kind but I like red and yellow for color)
1 zucchini, halved and sliced
8 oz sliced white mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, minced
12 oz pre-cooked sausage, sliced (smoked sausage, kielbasa, chicken-apple sausage, etc.)
8 oz yellow rice mix
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups water

Instructions
Heat oil in a large skillet
Add chopped onions and cook until softened, 3-5 minutes
Add peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, and garlic and cook until softened, about 3 more minutes
Pour vegetables into slow cooker
Add sausage to the skillet and cook for 2-3 minutes
Add sausage to slow cooker
Add tomatoes, water, and rice mix to slow cooker
Stir to combine all ingredients
Cook on low for 3-4 hours or on high for 2 hours. Paella is done when rice is cooked and your house smells amazing.

(Adapted from a recipe in the cookbook Eat! Move! Play!)

Before

Before I could snap an “after” photo, someone had already come along and eaten a bowl!

Keeping it Clean

There are two phases of clean-up for a slow cooker meal – after you prep, then after the meal is cooked. The cooking time gives you a good opportunity to clean up after yourself before the meal is done!

1. Wipe up as you go

The Scotch-Brite Scrubbing Dish Cloths are new and sold in packs of 2 for $4.99 at Target in four lovely colors: gray, mint, coral, and navy. (I like the mint because it matches my kitchen!) You can find them in the Kitchen Cleaning aisle:

There is a Cartwheel offer running 6/26-7/2 with a discount on the cloths. Cartwheel is a digital coupon app that you can use at Target. I tried it and it’s very convenient!

I kept the dish cloth close at hand while I prepped the paella, wiping spills up with the smooth high-quality cloth side, and scrubbing at cooked-in or dried spills and bits of onion or pepper. I don’t know about you, but when I dice vegetables, I seem to scatter little pieces of them all over the place. If I don’t wipe them up right away, they dry out and get stuck to the counter. The Scotch-Brite Scrubbing Dish Cloth can handle that, too with its scrubby side!

Clean as you go, and use a garbage bowl

2. Use a garbage bowl

Any large bowl will do – just keep it right next to your cutting board as you are trimming and chopping your vegetables, and throw the onion skins, pepper insides and seeds, zucchini ends, etc. right in there. That way you’re not stepping to the garbage can every few minutes, getting more debris on the floor.

Bonus of a garbage bowl: if you have a garden, bury the vegetable scraps between your planted rows. They will break down into compost right there in the dirt and enrich the soil for next season.

3. Stack your tools

Using a garbage bowl and the dish cloth, I managed to keep my usual mess to a minimum. And I stacked my little bowls inside my bigger ones, tossing in measuring spoons and cups, too, so items were not strewn about, taking up counter space.

4. Wash up

Scotch-Brite Scrubbing Dish Cloths are very effective at washing dishes, too! I am impressed by how well they get even cooked-on food off of the slower cooker pot, and how they clean without scratching.

At the end of the day, my kitchen was clean and so were all the utensils, pots, and pans, and we had a nice batch of our beloved paella (I used chicken apple sausage this time!) to enjoy for a few days! Several of my fellow bloggers have shared their kitchen clean-up ideas here, so check that out for more inspiration!

Since I loathe, and am obsessed with, cleaning my kitchen, I’d love to hear your shortcuts for cleaning up messes – leave them in the comments if you can spare a moment. Thanks for reading!