Using a slow cooker - techniques and tips

elona

I put a can of choppped tomatoes in any stew or curry that I make and very little extra liquid.

I am in Slimming World as well.

squeaky

Hiya

Yes on the liquids - though to reduce the amount you can put the meat on top of the veg and just cover the veg then mix them later - and you can also use cornflour to thicken the stock.

Yes you can add salt at the start and it won't be a problem.

When I catch up with myself I shall merge this thread with our main one on using a slow cooker so you can read all the other handy tips

Lara

Looking through a couple of slow cookery books I have it says you can cook a whole chicken but doesn't mention anything about water/liquid. Does this mean it doesn't need any as there will be enough coming out of the chicken? Thanks.

brummiebabe

Magentasue wrote:

Mine is a Tefal and only has one setting which I think of as High. When it's finished cooking (according to the timer) it automatically switches to Keep Warm. I only use mine for stew type meals and the one setting is fine - I wouldn't use a low setting ifit had one. Keep Warm is useful though for me because mine is a rice cooker and steamer too, not so important for slow cooking because it seems to keep a stew very hot if you don't open the lid even when it's switched off.

Mine sounds very similar, but I need to know how long to put it on for - should I cook as though I'm cooking on HIGH or is it ok to leave on for 6-8 hours???

Curry_Queen

Lara wrote:

Looking through a couple of slow cookery books I have it says you can cook a whole chicken but doesn't mention anything about water/liquid. Does this mean it doesn't need any as there will be enough coming out of the chicken? Thanks.

If you have a look in the slow cooker recipe index, I've posted a couple of recipes for cooking whole chickens - Whole Chicken in a crock and last week I posted a butter and garlic chicken. Very minimal "liquid" went into either of these recipes and the chicken cooks beautifully.

If I get chance soon I'll go find the recipes and edit them in, but I'm trying to do a million things at once at the moment and shouldn't really be here ... on a quick :coffee: break

squeaky

Hi CQ, off topic but just to ask - did you get my PM about my silly mistake yesterday and are you still speaking to me?

Queenie

brummiebabe wrote:

Mine sounds very similar, but I need to know how long to put it on for - should I cook as though I'm cooking on HIGH or is it ok to leave on for 6-8 hours???

You could try contacting the company by email and asking them if the manual isn't clear: Morphy Richards

I'm not familiar with that model but in your shoes I would

- test it by trying a recipe and assume that it's a High setting; see how it is after that; if it needs longer, simply cook it for longer.
Or
- dive in and cook for 6-8hrs, then, even if it's cooking at the High setting, by the sounds of the description it will be ok, because it will automatically go into "keep warm" mode.

Lara

Curry_Queen wrote:

If you have a look in the slow cooker recipe index, I've posted a couple of recipes for cooking whole chickens - Whole Chicken in a crock and last week I posted a butter and garlic chicken. Very minimal "liquid" went into either of these recipes and the chicken cooks beautifully.

If I get chance soon I'll go find the recipes and edit them in, but I'm trying to do a million things at once at the moment and shouldn't really be here ... on a quick :coffee: break

Found it - thank you soooooooooo much CQ - I've already switched it on high so now I'm going to pop the onions and garlic in the bottom, then the chicken on top and can quite happily disappear out the door for a couple of hours :). I've used my slow cooker several times since I've had it but only looked at this thread about a month ago and I am soooo pleased I did. The information and recipes are superb. Thank you!

Curry_Queen

squeaky wrote:

Hi CQ, off topic but just to ask - did you get my PM about my silly mistake yesterday and are you still speaking to me?

No, I hate you and I'll never speak to you again


I didn't actually spot what you'd done till late last night, having been snoozing on the sofa and watching Casualty ... by which time I reckoned it was a bit late in the day to worry too much about it. If anyone had asked to see the photo then I might have asked you nicely if you could host it for me edit back in the link


No worries, and in a way I'm relieved it's gone as I did worry about people being upset by it as this is the last place one would expect to see a photo of a snake, even if it was a diddy baby one

Magentasue

brummiebabe wrote:

Mine sounds very similar, but I need to know how long to put it on for - should I cook as though I'm cooking on HIGH or is it ok to leave on for 6-8 hours???

I don't know how mayny watts mine is but I only have that one setting and cook stews for at least six hours. I always set it for nine hours and just turn it off when we're ready to eat! So far I've only done soup and chilli type stew in it, we're vegetarian so don't know about cooking meat in it.

I also do a tomato sauce for the chilli stew. Basically on Day 1, I fry some onion and garlic and slow cook it with two 34p bottles of Smart Price Passata. Day 2 I blend that up and use it as the liquid for our stew. Day 3 some of the leftover stew is whizzed up into pizza sauce and the rest is frozen for a packed lunch, or, if there's enough, it becomes a layer in lasagne. The pizza sauce is a way of getting the kids to eat all that veg they picked out of the stew!