Slow cookers and slow cookery

ivyleaf

joedenise said:

It would be worth looking at the BBC food website.  I just googled slow cooker recipes and the first thing that came up was a beef casserole recipe on the BBC website:  link here:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/slow-cooker-beef-stew

If you haven't got anything that's listed or you don't like it then just leave it out, the ingredients aren't set in stone.

Thought it might be worth linking to the whole lot so here's the link with loads of SC recipes:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/slow-cooker

Thanks for this! And I see that on the right-hand side there's a guide to using a slow cooker, too!

missychrissy

Hi coffee hound. No need to soak red lentils. I make ham and lentil soup in my soup maker in  about 20 mins. 1 large carrot, onion, approx 2 slices of cooked ham, 3 cloves of garlic, stock cube and pepper. I put the lentils in after the water so lass risk of them sticking to the bottom. I add salt after cooking. I also add 2 tablespoons of lentils to cottage pies and casseroles as they break down and thicken. They add an extra layer of nutrition and another of your five a day. The only dry veg I pre soak are marrowfat peas that I soak the night before. I’m soaking some tonight and doing them in slow cooker tomorrow with a gammon joint (1.3 kg £4.69 in Aldi) together with a large chopped onion. I will freeze some of the ham and some of the peas separately for future meals as well as having 3 or 4 meals this. I sometimes cook a gammon joint in SC with split yellow peas, same way with a chopped onion. Makes lovely ham and pease pudding for sandwiches or soup if watered down.

Pulses are cheap and very nutritious. They store for a long time and cooked freeze well. I’ve found Tesco is usually the cheapest for lentils.

-taff

Si_Clist said:

Love the idea of the balls.  Forgive the dumb questions, but is that "a whole chicken" as in cheapo chicken straight from the supermarket bunged in the slow cooker straight out the bag, or what?  And what do you do with it when it's fallen apart?

Straight from the package into the slow cooker removing any giblets obviously, if there are any....and....what do you normally do with the chicken?

coffeehound

Thanks a lot for the useful infoz, missychrissy, the ham recipe sounds great.  I love lentil curry, so will try doing that in the SC, too.

Si_Clist

missychrissy said:

I'm ... doing them in slow cooker tomorrow with a gammon joint (1.3 kg £4.69 in Aldi) together with a large chopped onion.

Sorry, me again with another dumb question.  So, bung gammon joint in slow cooker, add chopped onion, then ... what, exactly?  What do you do by way of liquid?  Anything else go in? 

Bear with me, folks.  I'll get the hang of this lark before much longer

missychrissy

Gammon joint in first then peas n chopped onions. I cover the peas with water by about half an inch. I set my SC on high for one hour then turn down to low. Don’t add salt. If I set my SC off at 9 am it will be ready by 4 pm. If you find this too salty (our tastes are all diff) you can soak your gammon in cold water overnight and bring to the boil and discard water before putting it in the SC. It’s all trial and error. I discovered I’ve only got a 500 g bag of peas this time but sometimes I do a kg because I have a large SC.

The peas freeze beautifully later in those Chinese take away plastic containers in 2 person sized portions.

-taff

Just think of a slow cooker as a contained stewing pan, and any liquid will come out of any veg or meat and stay there. I think you might be overthinking it a bit Soak your gammon as you would normally, unless you don't, then put in slow cooker with onion or whatever, a little bit of liquid and cook. If you norally use the cooking liquor to make soup, add more liquid. When it's finished cooking, you can either use the liquid as is, or if you were making a stew, stir in some flour and cook on high for a bit so that it thickens, or pour out the liquid into a pan, add a thickener, cook and pour back in. It's all a bit trial and error in one sense because it all depends on what you're cooking.

Say what you're cooking and someone will give you a recipe Plus, don't forget, you can put it on overnight as well as in the day....

Si_Clist

-taff said:

 I think you might be overthinking it a bit

Probably.  I have a tendency to do that when I don't what I'm doing

The reason for all the questions is simply that for the last 40 years my Lady Wife's done all the cooking, but she's not really up to it at present.  I can't ask her, 'cos we've never had one before, I've nobody else to ask., and having spent the best part of £20 on this slow cooker, I can't afford to waste food in the using thereof.  And besides, I want to make her something nice for when she gets back from the hospital tomorrow.  That's if she actually goes, because right now it looks a lot like her MRI might be called off ...

goldfinches

I bought a slow cooker around September last year and I'm completely converted to this type of cooking now, it's wonderful. I bought the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew 3.5L  which has a lightweight aluminium non-stick inner as I have painful hands and did not want to cope with a heavy crockpot type of inner.
How I use it is to spend around an hour or so preparing a meal which, once cooked, I then divide into 6 or 8 portions twice a week. I then eat the portions for lunch and dinner for the next however many days they last before preparing the next meal on the morning of the day when I only have lunch left in the fridge if you see what I mean.
I borrowed a whole selection of books specifically about slow cooking from my local library and also read various articles online and the general gist was that you could use any casserole recipe designed to go into the oven provided you reduced the liquid you were adding by half and made sure you brought everything up to boiling point before putting the inner into the slow cooker.
In practice I've found that the liquid varies by what's actually in the pot, red lentils soak up an amazing amount of stock and so do chick peas for example. Then the second point is very important as what the slow cooker does is keep everything ticking over so if you start your recipe off cold it takes ages to heat up before it begins to cook but if you heat a tablespoon of oil and brown all your ingredients in it and then add hot stock, bring it all to a nice simmer and then pour it all into the pot it will come back to that nice simmer and be going along beautifully straight away and smelling wonderful too. The browning everything off gives you a nicer flavour as well so it's worth doing for that alone.
There are treasure troves of recipes available online such as this link below
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/slow-cooker-meals/
Have a great time experimenting and noshing your results.

bouicca21

I’m intrigued by sc ham.  I usually boil for half the time then roast - would sc ham come out similarly?

and pulses - do they need an initial boil like kidney beans? Or can they go in as is?