Getting to Know Your Slow Cooker - DWC Magazine: Strong Women, Strong Voices

Getting to Know Your Slow Cooker

Slow cookers or crockpots are a handy piece of equipment to have around, especially if you are short on time, or get flustered doing several things at once when cooking. 

But I am not going to give you recipes here, I am going to explain slow cooker do's and don't's, and proffer some tips, because I like you and I want to help you out.

If you are planning on having it all ready when you get back home from work, I'd suggest getting everything ready the night before in your slow cooker and storing in the fridge. Remove as soon as you awake, and switch it on just before you leave. Don't be late.

Cheap cuts of meat work best in these things, so don't waste your money on expensive cuts. But browning your meat off first is always a good idea, as too is trimming the fat. Same with sweating onions off as it will help the flavour of the end dish.

Remember, your slow cooker could be on all day, so anything with gentle flavours such as fresh herbs will be obliterated. Put them in right at the end. Same for rice and pasta. And dairy stuff.

You get home, take off the lid and ... there's too much liquid. Well, of course there is, one, you put a lid on it, and two, you followed a regular recipe that was expecting you to do it in a pan or in the oven. So, reduce the liquid content (no, not the red wine, you can never have to much of that).

Remember I said brown the meat off? Well when you do this throw some flour on it. This will end up in the liquid and thicken it up.

Leave it alone. No, stop it! You might be tempted to lift the slow cooker lid and smell it or stir it. Don't. It's resting. You wouldn't like being woken up every hour to be asked if you're sleeping okay.

You forgot to defrost the meat, didn't you? This actually doesn't matter, so just throw it in there. But remember this will increase the length of cooking time.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, put hard vegetables on the bottom, and meat on top of them. I reckon that'll do for now.

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