Fave Slow Cooker Recipes?.

[jon bda]

Looking for suggestions for good, basic but yummy food!.

[scaryjim]

pretty much anything that you'd stew normally! They're best used for cooking large joints of meat in a small amount of stock, but also good for vegetable stews, and pulses.

So: how about a vegetable and lentil stew?

- Chop up some vegetables of your choice. If you're going to use onions (I don't because they make my wife ill!), soften them in a frying pan first to mellow the flavour - most other veg can be chucked straight in. I'd probably use carrots, celery, a little bit of leek, sweet potato, and courgette - but you can use pretty much any veg you like (peppers tend to go strangely slimey though...). Chop the leek finely, and everything else into medium-sized chunks (about half an inch). Put it in the slow cooker.

- Wash your lentils a couple of times in cold water. I'm rubbish on actual weights - I use about 3 large handfuls of red lentils for two people, which I think is about 100g? When you've washed them, add them to the veg in the slow cooker and give them a good stir to get everything mixed in well.

- Then add some flavours - I tend to cheat and use bouillion powder (or a stock cube) as my base, and then make up the difference with asafoetida (also known as hing - use sparingly as it has a very strong flavour!), about a tablespoon of *good* soy sauce, and some smoked paprika, to get a nice rich savoury stew. Again, though, you can use a different combination to suit your taste.

- Now add some water. The crucial thing in slow cooking is to remember that you don't lose anywhere near as much water as you would in any other form of cooking, so you don't have to put as much in. For the ingredients above, using roughly 100g of lentils, I'd probably use no more than a mug and a half (so about 3/4 pint?) of water.

- Give everything another good stir, turn your slow cooker on, put the lid on, go away.

I'd expect a slow-cooked veg and lentil stew to take about 4 hours (although the great thing about a slow cooker is that you could leave it for 6 - 7 hours and it'd still be tasty ). I'd recommend the first couple of times you cook this to check the liquid levels after a couple of hours, just to make sure you've got enough in it - if you do add more make sure it's only a splash. Once you're confident about the amounts you should just be able to ignore it though

I'd serve this with mashed potatoes, which should only take about 15 - 20 minutes when you're ready to eat

[Greenlizard0]

Oddly enough it's spag bol, simmered for almost two hours and made from scratch.

Like Scaryjim any sort of casserole or stew is pretty decent, and also useful to use slightly older going out of date veggies.

[SeriousSam]

Flemmish stew is good, will have to dig out a recipe if I can find it... though I usually stick in a bottle of Dog rather than the ale it suggests.

[Moby-Dick]

coke chicken

chicken pieces - ketchup - can of full fat coke.

sounds odd , tastes great

[mycarsavw]

Sausage Casserole

Using only the meatiest sausages you can find.

[merdat]

Try this book

[Domestic_Ginger]

I tend to base slow cooking on the cut of meat and then go form there. Lamb breast or a nice fatty piece of mutton curried with the bones on must be my favourite.

[b0redom]

Bumpity! I just picked up a slow cooker at 50% off from Sainsbury's. Anyone got any recommendations?

[merdat]

Put your veg i.e. chunky carrots, swedes etc. into the bottom of the cooker then put skirt or chuck beef cut into 1 " cubes and seasoned on top of veg, add stock cubes (knorr) set to low and away you go.

[harryj1995]

I like making shredded beef in the slow cooker and serving it on tacos
The best recipe Ive found is http://www.mykitchenaddiction.com/20...shredded-beef/

[Scarey]

I've cooked gammon joint in coke (full fat) with onions. It's a winner. Sauce left behind is an ideal base for black bean sauce too

[Saracen]

I go along with what scaryjm said at the start of this thread, and only add that I don't really have a recipe. I just more or less make it up as I go, just following some simple guidelines, including

- for many things, quality in = tasty out. So for sausages, etc, the better they are, the better they taste.

- ironically, an exception to that is that many modern joints of meat are priced by demand, not taste. Many of the REALLY tasty cuts are the cheapest, because while really nice, they require slow cooking, which people don't want to do. That means that a slow cooker is a very good way of getting really good meat, cheap.

- dense veg, and meat, takes a lot longer to cook fully than light veg. If you use carrots, turnips, parsnips, swede, etc (and I do), they take a lot longer to cook that, say, celery or mushrooms. So I do the meat and dense veg for, typically, 6 or 7 hours, and bung in the celery, mushrooms etc 30-40 minutes from the end.

- cooking time depends on size of cut. If you want to speed up, or slow down, cut into smaller or larger pieces.

- a good base, and proper spices, herbs, etc, make the world of difference. You can start with packet mixes, but read the ingredients, and then start experimenting. Jim's suggestions are a good start.

- remember to season, but also remember that some ingredients, like Soy, season. If you use Soy, keep the salt you add, if indeed any is needed, to a minimum.

- if at all possible, taste an hour or so from finishing. Add seasoning if need be. Once you get to know what works to your taste, it probably often won't be necessary.

- slow cookers are an ESSENTIAL part of my kitchen. Chesp to buy, economical to run, produce superb-tasting meals for a little prep time and naff-all additional effort. Anyone that hasn't got one is seriously missing a trick. I've got most kitchen gadgets, and that's probably the one I'd least want to do without .... to the extent that I've got two, one medium size and one right whopper. And it cost about £30 to buy the pair. To anyone that hasn't got one, why the hell not?

[fatguy666]

Not exactly a recipe but I cook pork shoulder in it all the time.

Put the pork in and pour water over it til it's maybe 1cm deep then leave it on low for 8 hours. After that, throw the fat/skin in the bin. Put the pork into a baking tray and shred it then put it in the oven quite high until it goes cripsy.

With the juice that was left in the slow cocker, pour it through a seize and add Bisto pork gravy if you can find the stuff. Pour the gravy back in with the pork and serve with mash potatoes and veg.

God I'm hungry.

[circuitmonkey]

It's gotta be chilli,

I take a joint of beef (rump, silverside, topside, chuck... whatevers on special in the super market), dice it into 1" cubes. If I have the time I will coat it in a combination of flour and spices (think chilli, paprika, cumin), salt and pepper, and flash fry until crisp on the outside. If time is tight, I will just add this to the pot.

Add beans, I will normally use 2 cans of kidney beans (in chilli sauce), 1 can butter beans, 1 can of refried beans.

Again if I have the time I will fry off 1 large onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 4 rashers of bacon, all chopped up, if not, straight into the pot they go.

Add chilli powder, jalapeños and coco powder

I will then use larger to get the desired consistency.

Put the slow cooker on low and leave for 4+ hours, for a bit of controversy, lift the lid and taste after 2 hours, add more spices to taste.

Try it, love it, thank me!

Serve on Mexican rice (In a rice cooker add rice, chopped onion, jalapeños, bell pepper, tin of chopped tomatoes, and add chicken stock required water level)

[Chadders87]

I've experimented with the slow cooker a few times for stews and soups, but circuitmonkeys recipe has now been printed off and awaiting the weekend.

It sounds too good to miss up on. And i'm curious about using the coco powder..