All this cold weather makes me think about hot, comforting food like chili, soups, stews and others. It also reminds me that I don’t have a slow cooker. I’ve never really gotten over the crock pot foods of the 70′s. My mom was a single parent and used the crock pot quite a bit. It was easy, even at age 10, I remember sometime I was asked to put the ingredients in, which hours later yielded the family dinner. But I remember it all tasting the same. Meat that after 8 or so hours was hard to identify, but fell apart easily and a sauce that was also a bit of a mystery (not bad, but boring). We had everything from ham hocks and saurkraut (yes, really) to pot roast with veggies – but there was always a sameness.
After seeing so much about slow cooking, the ease of slow cookers (I am a busy mom after all) and some tasty looking recipes (always handy for a potluck), I recently mentioned being ready to purchase a slow cooker. Of course now I learned of the debate over which ones are safe, because of the possibility of lead. Here’s an interesting blog article about such research if interested and want to know which brands fess up to what’s in their product. I can’t believe this is another product with safety issues.
Then just when I thought I was going to embrace new foods from a slow cooker I was faced with more of that 70′s taste at a family gathering. Hmmm.
Between the blandness, texture and safety issues, maybe I’m better off wth one less appliaance. You never know. I may get there, but not a priority. Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong and share some of your favorite slow cooker makes/models and recipes to help nudge me to the slow side.
I’m with you on the same-tasteness of food cooked for long periods of time in a slow cooker. I have, however, found a couple of foods I make that make the slow cooker more useful than not.
First, I make yogurt in my SC. I have a blog post on our farm website from back in the summer on it, but I got the recipe from http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ in her breakfast archives. I use yogurt when I make bread and muffins ( as well as smoothies), so making it from raw milk is a much more cost-effective alternative for me. (Keeps me from having to buy a yogurt maker, too!)
Second, anytime I roast a whole chicken, I simmer the leftover carcass and bones in the SC. I’m trying to consume more bone broth in general, and we eat more soup in cold weather, so my need for broth/stock is high at this time of year. Making it in small batches in the SC keeps me from having to freeze the carcasses (freezer space is tight) until I have 3-4 of them to fill up my stock-pot and cook on the stove top.
I have it out at least once a week, usually twice. It’s worth it for me.
I use the slow cooker a lot for stock, but I’ve also made some other dishes in it (pot roasts, stews. I find the flavor is up to you — fresh herbs, good spices, as is is the variety of vegetables you incorporate. Slow cooker food can taste like Aunt Fanny’s Bad Beans, or it can be flavorful and interesting. I’ve adapted oven recipes for the slow cooker and also used the book “not your mother’s slow cooker.”
I’m not a slow cooker acolyte, but I think it has some uses — making something once a week in it is not unreasonable. But, it’s also not as easy as throwing everything into the pot. Some dishes require more set-up than we might expect. Meat needs to be browned, for example, to help draw out its flavor.
[...] As you may know I’ve been toying with the idea of purchasing a slow cooker. Read about my hesitations in my blog. My family is also doing Meatless Mondays and I am always looking for new vegetarian [...]