Hellobee Boards

Our favorite vegetable beef soup is a dump and go type deal. Its basically a 2lb chuck roast that we cube up (or you can buy stew meat, but I prefer to cut my own), 1 can each corn, green beans, and peas, 1-2 peeled and cubed potatoes, 1 cup each chopped celery, carrots, and onions, a bay leaf, some dried thyme, 1-2 teaspoons of Better than Bouillon beef base, and fill with enough beef broth or water to cover. Then you adjust the salt and pepper at the end. DH LOVES this with just some French bread, but the kids prefer it with cooked rice added into their bowls. It makes it thicker and thus easier to spoon into their mouths.

Same thing with chicken soup. We almost always just make it with boneless skinless chicken thighs and veggies and then add in a bunch of rice to the bowl before we serve it so its thick.

We also like the Pasta Fagiole soup from Olive Garden - and there are tons of copycat recipes online. Its basically ground hamburger in a minestrone type soup. I just boil some elbow macaroni separately and keep it in the fridge to add later when we're serving it up. This ends up being more like a runny pasta dish with the kids.

This site also has a lot of crockpot recipes that I've used successfully in the past:

https://www.sixsistersstuff.com/recipes/?search_recipes=Search+Recipes&course_type=&food_type=slow-cooker&recipe_keyword=

Not sure if this meets your criteria, but one I've recently tried and loved is a pork/beef roast, 1 pkg Ranch dressing mix, 1 pkg brown gravy mix, and 1 stick of butter. Just put it all in the crockpot and go. I also add carrots and potatoes. Yum and soooo easy.

This is not a stew recipe but an observation: I've found that I most use the slow cooker to cook the meat of a meal. Taco chicken, enchilada flavored chicken, teriyaki chicken (do you sense a theme? lol) and I use some of it that night and freeze the rest in ziploc bags to recreate the meal later.

So we have on demand quesadillas, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, asian bowls, etc.

Some 'sophisticated' ingredients to try might be hoisin sauce, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, turmeric, fennel lentils, chickpeas, anise, caraway seeds and cardamom.

One last note, sometimes I find that I've made underspiced food. Then I just add more in very approximate ratios to the original recipe.

@irene: Short ribs? I like how those come out in the slow cooker. I also like how a pork shoulder comes out ( I cook mine in a mixture of citrus juices as opposed to a can of soda), but more often than not, I don't really care for how meat comes out in a slow cooker. I drain away the liquid and do "pulled" style meat.

@irene: have you tried cooking dark meat chicken with the bone in? I feel like that is one of the best ways to keep the texture, though yes, it will still be mushy. I like this maple Dijon chicken drumsticks recipe, and the drumsticks aren’t so mushy and shredded- but they do still fall off the bone (which I like, I don’t like dealing with bones).
https://www.skinnytaste.com/crock-pot-maple-dijon-chicken-drumsticks/

I also like to make boneless chicken thighs in barbecue sauce and shreds it for pulled chicken sandwiches- it’s supposed to be shredded that way.

And I make salsa chicken for tacos or taco rice bowls. Again- pretty much shredded anyway. I just don’t really like cooking meat and prefer to let the slow cooker do it for me.