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Your favourite slow cooker meals.


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Old 09-11-2016, 15:30
Glawster2002
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Basically you can just chuck stuff in and let it cook for 8-10 hours and it is usually great. Cheap cuts of meat are best as it is a waste to put really good stuff in there, but the long slow cooking tenderises the tough meat.
We do the same. I've wanted one for ages but my wife didn't see the appeal and said we'd use it once and then never again. We visited friends @ 18 months ago for the evening who did a stew in a slow cooker and my wife was instantly convinced.

We've had one for @ 17 months now and use it all the time, they are great on a Sunday where you can throw everything in in the morning and then in the evening it is ready, nothing else to be done.

I know I am the odd one out but I really dislike food from slow cookers. It all comes out tasting exactly the same and I don't like the texture or taste.

So I was about to bin the slow cooker when I read a great tip on another forum - use it to make candles. Waiting for my soy wax to arrive, pleased I can save binning it and using it for something useful
I must admit, in the 17 months or so we've had ours we've never had food all tasting exactly the same.
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Old 09-11-2016, 15:54
CappySpectrum
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I haven't made this in awhile but later on today I will be making a spicy mixed meat stew.

1kg cubed beef
1lb cubed lamb
1 red onion
1 red bell pepper
finger chillies
peeled chooped potatoes
onion gravy

Method

brown the meat, onion & 2 finger chillies in a pan and transfer to slow cooker on low, stir in the onion gravy. After 4hrs of cooking, add the chopped potatoes & a couple more finger chillies, add more gravy if need be.

Last time I made this it was delicious and the heat worked really well for a cold night & even spicier on the second night as the oils from the chillies had settled nicely into the gravy, but still had the nice taste of the onion gravy.

Serve with Yorkshire puddings and a crusty roll or French stick.
Nom, nom, nom!
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Old 09-11-2016, 21:16
Toby LaRhone
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I make veg soup in my slow cooker about every 2 weeks. I get 3 massive meals out of it (freeze 2). Just swede, carrot, parsnip, spuds, celery, onion, garlic, tomato, pulses etc. My neighbor bought me the cooker for fixing her pc. I thought it would be cr*p, but it's fantastic. Ditto the breadmaker she got me for another job. So now it's homemade soup + wholemeal bread at my gaff - all down to my kind neighbor !
When you fixed her PC you took the fuse out of her toaster didn't you?
Have you given her a wish list?
😜
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Old 09-11-2016, 21:22
claremonts
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You'd probably die if you had my mothers as it is so good but deadly fattening. I haven't had it in a very long time probably 12 - 13 years maybe more. It is so delicious.

Tempted to try doing it myself to see if I can find that same taste near Christmas.


Her vanilla ice cream was the same. So creamy, pure white like mr whippy and so silky. Damn, it was some of the best ice cream I had ever tasted. As she had one of those slow machine whippers? Again it was deadly fattening. Haven't had it in over a decade.

Let alone her pancakes, tablet and millionare shortbread. The school children died for it, so much so they pestered their mothers to make it. The mothers said to her they got all this grief because it didn't taste the same as hers. This was why everybody loved raffle day as all this stuff arrived.
It all sounds amazing - my childhood memory of homemade rice pudding is people fighting over the dark skin that formed on top (bar me).

I don't use my Slow Cooker as much as i should, but now that the weather is getting colder it's time to get my really old Slow Cooker recipe book out, and fill the house with fab cooking smells again.
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Old 09-11-2016, 21:51
Toby LaRhone
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I've found them paricularly useful if you have an informal party of friends around i.e. not a sit down meal.
Last NYE we were a group of about 18.
We had the usual cold "buffet" items around 7/8pm and around 10/11pm I had three slow cookers of chilli on the go - two mild, one hotter.
I've done the same with curries.
I have a 6.5L and a 3.5L and we borrowed the other.
Switch them off and they stay hot for hours.
They are ridiculously cheap.
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Old 10-11-2016, 22:06
sueh21
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You can also make your Christmas pud in them, lot easier than having to remember to top up a pan of water on the hob
http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/33831...s-pudding.aspx

Also good for a big pan of mulled wine🍷
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Old 11-11-2016, 11:17
Vast_Girth
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I know I am the odd one out but I really dislike food from slow cookers. It all comes out tasting exactly the same and I don't like the texture or taste.

So I was about to bin the slow cooker when I read a great tip on another forum - use it to make candles. Waiting for my soy wax to arrive, pleased I can save binning it and using it for something useful
I tend to prefer food cooked in the oven. Things like stews and casseroles just seem to lose a certain depth of flavour when slow cooked.

The one thing I have found that does work very well though is beef brisket in a BBQ style sauce.
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Old 11-11-2016, 12:40
Menk
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I know I am the odd one out but I really dislike food from slow cookers. It all comes out tasting exactly the same and I don't like the texture or taste.

So I was about to bin the slow cooker when I read a great tip on another forum - use it to make candles. Waiting for my soy wax to arrive, pleased I can save binning it and using it for something useful
I can understand this thought. Although I don't agree that everything comes out tasting exactly the same, a lot of vegetables do not do well when slow cooked. Parsnips and swede overpower a stew at the best of times, but slow cooked, they pass on their flavour and lose their taste in the process. Slow cooked carrots always taste the same - over-cooked - which is a taste I don't like.

Greens are a no-no in the slow cooker, things like cauliflower lose their definition and so on and so on.

Onions are fine, as are mushrooms and leeks. But the majority suffer from over-cooking and have an inferior flavour to what they would have if they were cooked in other ways.
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Old 11-11-2016, 22:55
Toby LaRhone
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I can understand this thought. Although I don't agree that everything comes out tasting exactly the same, a lot of vegetables do not do well when slow cooked. Parsnips and swede overpower a stew at the best of times, but slow cooked, they pass on their flavour and lose their taste in the process. Slow cooked carrots always taste the same - over-cooked - which is a taste I don't like.

Greens are a no-no in the slow cooker, things like cauliflower lose their definition and so on and so on.

Onions are fine, as are mushrooms and leeks. But the majority suffer from over-cooking and have an inferior flavour to what they would have if they were cooked in other ways.
If you put everything together at the start you'll have mushy results for some foods.
You wouldn't bung all veg in the same pot for the same time. No different to an oven baked casserole or cooking on the hob.
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Old 15-11-2016, 20:44
Menk
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If you put everything together at the start you'll have mushy results for some foods.
You wouldn't bung all veg in the same pot for the same time. No different to an oven baked casserole or cooking on the hob.

Mm - object defeated right there.
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Old 22-11-2016, 15:54
Asarualim
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Last thing I did in my slow cooker was a Moroccan lamb tagine. Cubed lamb chunks, onions, tomatoes, diced carrots, chillis, garlic, ginger, spices (cumin, chilli powder, paprika, cinnamon), chick peas and a handful of dried apricots, turned it on first thing in the morning, left it cooking all day and had it for dinner. Lovely.
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