Vegetables in slow cooker - help please

sixtiesgal_2

Hi, I bought a slow cooker the other day with the idea of having a ready made meal when I get in from work without it being a microwave ready meal that I always seem to be eating.


The other night in the slow cooker I had a chicken breast and some veg, as instructed on the instructions for the slow cooker I put the veg at the bottom and the meat on top, added stock. I switched it on that morning and when I got home freom work my meal was cooked, the chicken tasted nice but the veg tasted awful, really stewed and overcooked. Its now put me off using the slow cooker again. Am I doing anything wrong? I don't really want to put the veg in when I get home as that defeats the purpose of doing a one step convenient meal.

Lilyplonk

What size were the pieces of vegetables? If you'd cut them up rather small, maybe you'd be better leaving them in bigger chunks :undecided.

Must admit that I've always done things like casseroles/stews/scouse/chillies in mine - things where the vegetables needed to be well-cooked.

sniffles

There is a lot of love for slow cookers on here but they are not always the best. Chicken cooks fast and gets too tender if left for longer than 6 hours.
Fish should never be done as it cooks within 3 minutes on a pan
Tough beef works fine overnight, but gets watery so needs to be removed to a pan with gravy added.
Soup (in my opinion) is poor. My recipe for scotch broth which has been perfect for 40 years, became a brown watery mess in the sc.

I use it for stock. It works well for that along with stew (which needs a bit of a boost at the end).
I used it to save on pans, washing up and electricity but as I need to brown everything first well ..
Fortunately, I have sturdy le crueset pots which work better and use less power overall.
This is only my opinion.

sniffles

To add, if you add veg when you get home, it will be undercooked. Best to add a little oil in a pan with salt and leave for a few minutes. Overall anything is better than microwave, but sometimes who cares?

Linda32

I've got a slow cooker setting on my oven and when I use that I leave the root veggies in sizes that you would need to cut into 4 pieces in order to eat.


Root veggies cook very oddly in slow cookers bearing in mind how quickly they cook in the saucepan and how small you would normally cook them.

terra_ferma

I would agree that veggies tend to be overcooked. You can get away with it in stews, as people have said.
SC works well for me because I can add most of the veggies half way, when I don't they are not great. The meat however is lovely (I like pork joints in particular).

poorly_scammo

Unlike conventional cooking where the meat is the part that is best submerged under the liquid, the reverse is true for slow cookers. The vegetables MUST be submerged under the liquid and the meat and can be exposed otherwise they'll never cook.