Hello everyone!! Today, I'm going to take a walk off the baking track and talk to you about some slow cooker tips (because I am using a slow cooker today and I thought it would be a nice change). Slow cookers can be used to make ANY recipe. Stews, chowders, pot roasts, gumbos, chillis, and so much more. They are the bread and butter for any busy person. For someone who is at work for a long day and is simply are too tired to make a meal, for someone who doesn't have enough room on the stove while making a large dinner for a large family, or just for someone who wants to start dinner in the morning and not have to worry about it while they spend some time with friends and family. But there are some things to worry about when using a slow cooker because even though they need little management, the food can still turn out bad if you don't remember some key things:
1. Most slow cooker recipes will be cooked on slow: if you cook on high when cooking meets they can get stringy and sometimes not very nice. If you do want to cook on high to speed up the process, you can cook on high for half the time.
2. Put different ingredients in at different times: remember that when you are cooking vegetables, roots take longer to cook than other vegetables do. So you can put them in sooner than other vegetables and you should never cut them any larger than 1 inch. Meats take longer to cook to so remember this as well. If you have sweet vegetables like green peppers, if you put them in at the beginning of the cooking process, then could turn bitter at the end, so add them later. If you have fresh herbs, you can add them at the beginning but they might lose there finesse, so you can add some extra at the end to give it that kick.
3. It CAN over cook: you can cook it for hours but if you cook it for TOO long then it may get over cooked and mushy. So try to stay as true to the cooking time as possible. The general rule for slow cooking times is meat cooks for 6-8 hours and poultry and veggies cook for 4-6 hours.
4. Use less liquid: in a slow cooker, no liquid escapes. Unless you are using a thickening agent like flour or cornstarch, you will want to have less fluid.
5. *DON'T PEEK*: I know it’s hard to resist but peeking will add 30 minutes on to the cooking time. The whole reason for the slow cooker is that all the heat gets cooped up in that pot and if you open the lid and "peek" then that’s just defeating the purpose. Only check, if needed, halfway through and at the minimum cooking time (EX: if it says cook for 4-6 hours, check at 4 hours).
Those are the most important things to remember. Just have fun with the slow cooker because if you get used to it and start using it frequently you will see that it will be the best thing that ever happened to you. HAPPY COOKING!!
