Slow Cooker Recipes

[Ships Cat]

Worth their own thread for ease of finding?

 

After having one for years and years, using it in fits and starts, but more so after I divorced the x and lived the poor life for a bit.

 

Beans and bacon winter warmer

 

Soak dried beans (they keep for ever in your cupboard) and boil if recommended. Then drop in the slow cooker with a chopped onion, some herbs of choice and a small bacon joint. Add a tin of warmed up chopped tomatoes and put on for all day - 8 hrs on auto. When done, flake the bacon into the beans, and if you want to thicken the sauce up a bit decant into a pan and add a ball of flour made with melted butter and whisk till thicker. Great with a hunk of buttered bread.

 

Good thing about slow cookers is that if you're late back - even hours and hours, the food rarely spoils. I use to set mine on Sunday mornings, spend all day out on the motorbike and come home tired and hungry and there it was.

 

Note, if you make several different recipes with tomatoes in they will taste samey. Add fresh herbs at the end to stop this. Tomato recipes are for some reason prone to this sameness, and you could rapidly get fed up with it so ring the changes with cheese sauce etc

 

You can roast a whole chook in a slow cooker and it makes for good stock in the bottom too, Not for you if you like crispy chicken but it comes out uber-moist. Pick a chook that will fit and let the lid on - a 3l suits a good sized bird. Add a bit of water and I stick a quartered lemon up it's backside but that's up to you. I skin it too, it'll go soggy anyway and you can always cut it into strips and fry it crispy as a treat later. Cook on high for 6 - 8 hours. The juices make awesome gravy.

 

You can make dessert too - stick seasonal veg in the bottom, add a bit of hot water and pour on a sponge.

 

The sponge: weigh an egg, then add the same weight of SR flour, and the same of sugar into a bowl, and stir in the beaten egg. Add milk to make up the batter - this is known in France as a quarter-cake and is a sure-fire way to make sponge. Pour on top and cook on auto for about 3 hours. You can leave half a tablespoon of flour out and add cocoa if you want chocolate sponge and a bit of vanilla rarely goes amiss.

 

A small one (1.5l) is great to steam a Christmas pud, or any suet pudding. For suet pudding, mix shredded suet with SR flour, 50:50 and this makes dumplings too. I like to add herbs to my dumplings. You can steam the dumplings or pop them in the slow cooker an hour before you eat. For a pud, line a pudding dish with the suet, and pop in stewed fruit etc, and then use the rest of the suet as a lid. Wrap with a tea towel and tie the corners into ears and then tie two together so you can lift it out with a wooden spoon handle. Cook for about 2 hours on hot, in about an inch of water - check half way and top up if you have to with boiling water.

 

Remember if you take the lid off you break the seal and let the heat out so the cooking time will have to take another half hour for every time you peer at the food so try and get a cooker with a clear lid.

 

Beef soup - chunks of beef, some red onion, celery and shredded cabbage, hot stock over, cook for three hours on hot. Noodles in this works well too.

 

Lentil thingy - I use red lentils as they cook quicker than green, brown or Puy. Add garlic, chilli, chopped chicken, and cover with hot water. Cook for about 4 hours on hot. Six hours on auto if the other type of lentil.

 

Chop root veg very small or it'll take forever to cook. I'd rather steam/boil those separately, only takes 20 mins when you get in.

 

You can make porridge but that's what a microwave is for, for me.

 

It's interesting: I have an ancient 3l Russell Hobbs cooker which has a plastic outer and the outer never gets hot, just the crock lid. The small 1.5 Tesco for a fiver job is stainless steel clad and gets blinking red hot, so if you're buying a new one, bear this in mind. The small one is only 50w less and probably uses more (batteries have run out on the energy monitor) than the large one due to rubbish insulation. But does cook quite a lot quicker. It's only in use this week cos the kids are away with their dad camping. And Christmas day for four hours ...

 

 

 

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

http://www.slowcookerrecipes.org.uk/

[Ships Cat]

I've never used a book written recipe in my life. Goes for't net, too. Recommendation works well.

[Laurie St Lyon]

Slow cookers are marvelous. I roast pork in mine on a sunday. To stop the meat being soggy I have a re-usable oven chip grid (that you just pop your chips on and they come up crisp so you dont have to cremate them-buy from Poundland) that is folded in 4 and put on the bottom of the pot. It lifts the meat off the bottom and leaves juices for gravy.

 

I use mine for curry. (chicken thighs x4, diced onion, curry paste to taste, tin of chopped tomatoes. Small amount of added water if leaving to cook unnnatended or if you are about dont add water but 10 mins before serving add cream (no sooner or it curdles). Alternatively use coconut milk instead which can be put in at the start because cocnuts don't go MOOO !

 

Oh, and I found a 12v Slow cooker here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roadpro-12V-Slow-Cooker-Black/dp/B0013IR88A

and Here: http://www.the12voltshop.co.uk/Shop/slow-cooker-rpr-c1417-.html

 

I wonder if anyone has used one?

Edited August 16, 2013 by Laurie St Lyon

[GeoffS]

I am not sure these are that viable without electric hook up. 7 amps for, say, 8 hours cooking will make quite a dent to the battery capacity.

[Peter Reed]

"You can make dessert too - stick seasonal veg in the bottom, add a bit of hot water and pour on a sponge."

Carrot,broccoli and cauliflower sponge and custard-Yum Yum

ETA the first line was taken from post 1.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Peter Reed

[Laurie St Lyon]

You can make dessert too - stick seasonal veg in the bottom, add a bit of hot water and pour on a sponge.

Carrot,broccoli and cauliflower sponge and custard-Yum Yum

While I am not quite in the "Veg is what you feed TO your food" party That SOUNDS Horrible! Soory it seems ....just wrong!

Edited August 16, 2013 by Laurie St Lyon

[Peter Reed]

While I am not quite in the "Veg is what you feed TO your food" party That SOUNDS Horrible! Soory it seems ....just wrong!

Sorry to be a numpty, I have edited the above post.

[Naughty Cal]

I am not sure these are that viable without electric hook up. 7 amps for, say, 8 hours cooking will make quite a dent to the battery capacity.

Not really. We use ours a lot whilst out and about cruising. As we have limited cooking facilities onboard (2 gas rings and a grill) it made sense to add a cheap small inverter (300 watt £15 jobbie) and a £9 slow cooker to the itinery. We use it a hell of a lot especially if we have a long days cruising planned. That way we know we have a good home cooked meal ready at the end of the day with minimum fuss.

 

Tomato and Garlic Lamb casserole is one of our favourite slow cooker meals. Add diced lamb leg (also works great with beef shin) a couple of tins of tomatoes, chopped onion, garlic, mushrooms and bell pepper and leave it alone all day.

 

Slow cookers are great for cheaper cuts of meat as well. Beef shin is our current favourite.

 

Sunday lunch this week will be slow cooked rump top joint with new potatoes, baby leeks and stuffing. One pot cooking.

[Dyertribe]

After some research on tinterweb it seems that the old fashioned 1970s models are the most energy saving slow cookers, mine is my mums cast off from that era and it is still going strong, there's not a lot to go wrong really unless you break the crock. You can still find them on flea bay if you look hard.

 

Alyson

[Naughty Cal]

After some research on tinterweb it seems that the old fashioned 1970s models are the most energy saving slow cookers, mine is my mums cast off from that era and it is still going strong, there's not a lot to go wrong really unless you break the crock. You can still find them on flea bay if you look hard.

 

Alyson

What wattage is yours?

 

Our Tesco cheapy one is only 90-150 Watt. Easily managed by the cheap inverter we bought. £24 well spent to buy the slow cooker and the inverter and we have used them for pretty much every weekend since we bought them a couple of years ago now!

[Dyertribe]

70 watts I think

[ditchcrawler]

I am not sure these are that viable without electric hook up. 7 amps for, say, 8 hours cooking will make quite a dent to the battery capacity.

Ours is on while cruising.

[Biggles]

My 2 favorites in a slow cooker are both lamb based, Boned rolled shoulder and lamb shanks. Both come out fantastically. I did some butterfly lamb chops a couple of days ago.

[Naughty Cal]

Lamb breast also works well. The fat just melts out of it.

 

In fact most cheap cuts of meat do.

 

Beef shin is another and rump top.

 

Slow cooked duck is to die for and slow cooked chicken falls off the bone.

 

We also find the slow cooker makes good curries and chillies. Whilst away we made a beef madras which went down well with everybody. Makes an impressive dinner with minimum effort!

[pquinn]

when i looked up the recipes online for our crockpot allmost all of them called for the meat to be browned/sealed before putting in to the pot and i was just wondering do people do this or just sling it in raw and let it cook?

 

paul.

[Dyertribe]

I don't brown the meat often, sometimes for a casserole but cooking a lamb breast or a whole chicken I just season the meat and put he lid on!

[Naughty Cal]

We dont bother browning the meat. We just lob it in the pot.

 

Yesterdays dinner of slow cooked rump top in ale gravy was lovely. The meat just fell apart. Dead easy as well.

 

Add a chopped onion, a few chopped mushrooms and some new potatoes to the pot. Add some real ale and beef stock, stick the rump top joint on top and season well with salt and pepper. Add a few herbs and some garlic and leave on low power all day. We left it on for about 12 hours and it was amazing. Melt in the mouth beef.

[Caprifool]

I know that sometimes one just wants a full belly. But are there any nutrians what so ever left in there after eight hours of cooking?

[Naughty Cal]

Yes!

[Caprifool]

I dont see it posible that a single vitamin could service that :-)

[bizzard]

I prefer my pressure cooker, meal cooked in a few minutes, all the goodness locked in, minimal amount of gas required and the meat is always tender and melts in the mouth.

[Jerra]

I dont see it posible that a single vitamin could service that :-)

The vitamins probably don't but then again as I understand it they don't stand up well to exposure to much heat of any kind for long.

[Naughty Cal]

Today's offering. Slow cooked coca cola ham.

 

Sounds rank but actually very very nice. Take a gammon joint add coca cola and leave on low power all day.

 

This creates a sweet juicy ham.

[ditchcrawler]

I know that sometimes one just wants a full belly. But are there any nutrians what so ever left in there after eight hours of cooking?

At first when I read belly I thought you were talking about cooking pork.

I don't cook but I do eat and Diana has done whole chicken when we have had guests onboard. Lamb and Pork stakes but not a joint yet.