That's amazing! When you need to feed a crowd, there's nothing more useful than this slow-cooking appliance that can cook a huge portion of many dishes consistently, rendering them a million times tastier than the sum of their parts. The good news? It's beyond easy to use a slow cooker. While all slow-cooker recipes will give you exact parameters for heat level and timing, you may also be comforted to know that the basic tenets are pretty similar across the board regardless of the exact type of slow cooker you own.
Whether you're a novice or a seasoned slow cooker chef, here are some general tips to help you get the most out of the experience — along with a few of my favorite slow-cooking recipes to boot. While your slow cooker is cleverly designed to cook food unsupervised over a long period, you should still take some precautions to ensure absolutely safe conditions.
As someone who loves the idea of slow cooking as much as she is a consummate worrier, I advise clearing plenty of counter space for your slow cooker. Since the outside of the appliance gets hot when it's working away at cooking your dinner, be sure to leave a good amount of room on each side — inches should be fine.
As the bottom is made for sitting on top of any kitchen surface, no need to worry about cushioning it. One of the benefits of cooking with a slow cooker is being able to minimize the elbow grease involved in meal prep.
As such, try to choose low-maintenance recipes that don't require a ton of prep outside of placing the food into the slow cooker and letting it cook away while you catch up on the day's news. I like slow-cooker recipes that don't ask too much of me. While you can find plenty of complicated ones, don't they defeat part of the purpose of whipping out the slow cooker in the first place? Opt for recipes that cue for basic prep: chopping veggies or trimming fat from meat and browning it.
One of the slow cooker's great functions is transforming large pieces of tough meat into dinner that's tender and juicy by cooking it slowly and consistently. As such, you can get away with buying slightly less pricey, fattier cuts of meat and still be rewarded with a meal that tastes incredible. The long and slow method of cooking the meat renders it fork-tender without much effort. Great cuts of meat for your slow cooker?
Try pork shoulder, lamb shank, beef brisket, or short ribs. The slow cooker asks so little of you and gives you so much.
Don't begrudge it the nicely browned meat it so desires. While this magical appliance can do wonders, it still needs a little flavor assist. Please don't just throw raw meat into the machine! Searing the meat on the stove before you add it to the slow cooker is crucial for locking in flavor and building a savory, caramelized crust.
Go easy with the cooking alcohol when you use your slow cooker. When you prepare foods on the stovetop at higher heat while uncovered, most of the alcohol evaporates by the time you finish cooking, leaving subtle undertones that deepen the flavors. Since the slow cooker cooks foods at significantly lower heat while covered, the alcohol won't evaporate in the same way.
As a result, your dish may be left with a strong, bitter taste. As you're not stirring constantly when you use your slow cooker, it's better not to add dairy products like milk, cream, yogurt, and the like early on. Doing so causes unsavory curdling. Salmon and asparagus are a lovely combination in a recipe, but cooking them in a slow cooker would give you a watery mess that no one will want to eat.
However, the parsnip in the photo above is another story. First of all, you will want to be safe, and secondly, why? The microwave reheats in minutes and a crock pot is meant for long slow cooking. A crock pot is not meant to do everything, folks.
If you read the instructions that come with your crock pot, it will tell you not to use it for reheating food. The reason is that food takes a long time to get to a safe temperature and the low setting for a short period could allow harmful bacteria to build up. This means no taking a filled crock pot to a pot luck dinner and turning it on for just 15 minutes when you arrive, unless your idea of a good party time is sending your friends home ill!
Most crock pots made today have removable stoneware liners. If you cook in the slow cooker often, you will know that the meals are often better on the second day. Put that liner to good use by reheating the whole thing in the oven and you will know that the food is perfectly safe. The last of my slow cooker mistakes tips comes from a reader of my blog — Robyn. Using a smaller size will solve that problem. Slow cookers are also great for serving hot dips at parties!
Why not keep one pot for normal cooking and have a smaller one to use for smaller tasks? Can you think of some other slow cooker mistakes that you would like to share? Please leave your comments below! Admin note: This post first appeared on my blog in January of I have updated the post to add new photos and a additional crock pot errors that many people make when using a slow cooker. Would you like a printable for the back or your cupboard door? Print out the list of crock pot errors below on the card and laminate it.
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In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. I would add, there are apparently a lot of people who make the mistake of putting foil under the lid. Sometimnes it is a fatty choice of meat that causes this. The released fat makes everything seem watery. The answer in this case is a different cut of meat. Some recipes ask for a thickener during the cooking, or right before serving.
This helps to thicken sauces. I used my manual crock pot for the first time today, to make a goulash with pork shoulder.
The sauce tasted fine, and my husband said it was nice, but I was disappointed with the meat which was not as tender as I would like and I thought it was a bit dry and tasteless. I seared it first, I did not cut off any fat as there was not much on the meat and the recipe said I should cook it on low for hours which I did, I did raise the lid during cooking but only twice.
Sometimes it is just the cut of meat that makes the difference. Normally pork turns out very tender. The only thing that might help is just cooking it longer on low than the recipe calls for, but there is no real way of knowing this in advance.
USDA states this Reheating leftovers in a slow cooker is not recommended. However, cooked food can be brought to steaming on the stove or in a microwave oven and then put into a preheated slow cooker to keep hot for serving. Hey, just got myself a Crock-Pot. And tried two making basquaise chicken and the other time honey garlic chicken. Both time I was using chicken thighs and the sauce came ultra watery.
Ive read that if you sear the skin before putting it in the crock pot doesn't make it as watery, but it still happened. So I guess I'll have to try removing it next time. But then I was wondering, what about a whole chicken? Should I skin and cut it into pieces as well? I thought a crock pot would work like a roaster in a oven Leaving skin on chicken pieces does have a tendency to make it watery.
This is the oil that is released during cooking. Removing the skin helps with this problem but also makes the chicken less moist. The slow cooker, or crock pot, is certainly one of the most popular kitchen utensils. Be sure you are not making one of these slow cooker mistakes to get the best out of your crockpot.
Often, the lid is kept on during the whole cooking process. Be sure to use the correct cut of meat A crock pot will save you lots of money by allowing you to cook cheaper, and less tender cuts of meat that get amazingly tender.
I often coat the meat in flour before I sear it. Using way too much alcohol is a problem. The fat of the chicken skin will also make the sauces oily. A note on chicken bones The bones of chicken could become very soft and break down if the recipe is cooked for too long a time. When your pasta is perfectly al dente, serve immediately.
Either way, you've successfully avoided a mushy mess. Slow cookers are pretty basic machines. You can cook on high or low — there's no in-between. So what's the best choice for scrumptious slow cooked meals? As the saying goes, less is more. According to Jack Bishop of America's Test Kitchen , using the high setting on the slow cooker has the potential to ruin a dish. The difference between the two settings isn't a higher temperature , it's the time it takes for the slow cooker to reach the simmer point.
On high, that's around three to four hours, and on low, it's seven to eight, according to Crock-Pot. So imagine if your dinner is cooking away on high all day while you're at work. That meat will have been simmering four hours longer than it needed to — probably not the best way to ensure tenderness. As annoying as it is to have to drag out another pan and then wash that pan , we know that searing meat before tossing it into the slow cooker is an important step toward great flavor.
So why aren't you also browning your veggies, especially if you've already got the pan dirty? Sure, you can add raw onion and garlic into the slow cooker and the world will not come to an end. But we all know that caramelized onion is better than not caramelized onion, so why not add all that extra flavor into your dish?
Remember, just because you're using a slow cooker doesn't mean you've given up on life. As we know, too much moisture means watered down flavors. Pro tip: If you're going to go to the extra effort or searing meat and browning aromatics and vegetables, definitely do not forget to deglaze the pan with a little wine or broth. All those scraped up browned bits translate to tons of extra flavor. So you made chili in the slow cooker, and instead of the usual canned beans you decided to throw in that bag of dried kidney beans that's been collecting dust in the pantry.
Fast forward a few hours later and it's not just the normal chili-educed gas that you're experiencing — it's vomiting and diarrhea and severe abdominal pain. You can blame those dried beans for that. Though all dried beans contain a toxin called phytohaemagglutinin, it is particularly high in kidney beans, and that toxin will only be killed with a minute boiling water bath. Otherwise, you're looking at gastrointestinal distress from as few as four improperly prepared beans.
The slow cooker is not known for its super high cooking temperatures temperatures may vary by brand, but Crock-Pot slow cookers stabilize at degrees, which is shy of the degree boiling point of water , and because of this, the FDA does not recommend using the appliance if your recipe includes kidney beans.
It simply doesn't get hot enough to kill the toxin. It's not hopeless, though. If you've already soaked your dried kidneys beans for 12 hours and boiled them for 10 minutes, go ahead and throw 'em in the slow cooker. Or just open the darn can, like the rest of us.
You've got leftovers in the slow cooker. Clearly the easiest thing to do is throw the crock into the fridge, and reheat the whole shebang the next day, right?
Unless you're interested in rolling the dice on food poisoning. We get it, transferring the food to another dish means you just have one more thing to wash.
But loading a still-warm crock full of still-warm food into the fridge means it probably won't cool fast enough, and that's where you wade into the danger zone for bacteria. Even if you have done the right thing and transferred the leftovers into shallow containers and cooled them properly, the slow cooker still isn't a safe bet for reheating. That's because any reheated foods need to reach a minimum of degrees within two hours, and that's just not going to happen in a slow cooker — it's slow , remember?
The USDA recommends reheating in an oven or microwave, and then using the slow cooker to keep the food warm. A little more work, we know, but it sure beats the alternative. Taking a peek. Using expensive cuts. Not searing meat first. Cooking skin-on chicken. Adding fresh herbs too early. Using the wrong size of slow cooker. Adding dairy products too soon. Using too much alcohol.
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