Planning my meals for the week and quite fancy doing a beef and red wine casserole in the slow cooker. I havent used my slow cooker much. Plan is to prepare the stuff tonight and switch it on before work in the morning so it cooks all day.

I have found a recipe where the vegetables are fried, the red wine is heated etc and its all put into the oven for 4 hours. There is a wee note at the bottom that says a slow cooker can also be used.

Do I still have to fry the veg, heat the red wine etc if I'm just tossing it into the slow cooker the night before? Or should i just chuck all the ingredients in raw and switch the cooker on before I go to work??

I made a ragu the other week in the slow cooker and what I found is that it doesn't reduce very much.
Frying the veg is to give it some colour and extra flavour. It's not essential.
Reducing the red wine will concentrate the flavour and burn off the alcohol. It's optional but preferable.


If you're not too bothered you can just stick it all in on low, as I did, but I found I had to put it on high for an extra couple of hours to reduce and thicken the ragu. An alternative would have been to transfer it, or a portion, to a frying pan to reduce quicker but that seemed to defeated the object of using a slow cooker.

Chilli is quick and easy in the slow cooker..Just bung everything in it and leave..either on low or auto