mindphlux posted:A crock pot heats an enclosed ceramic bowl to a low temperature, for a prolonged period of time. Crock pots are great at that. I do almost all of my cooking on Sunday for the entire week. The oven can get pretty busy for most of the day on other recipes at higher temps so its nice to do a braise in the crockpot instead. Also, when I lived in a tiny apartment in Texas, using the crockpot instead of running a hot oven in an already super hot place wasn't a good idea or energy efficient due to blasting the AC and the oven at the same time. So, there are multiple good reasons for them that work for many people. No reason not to shoot for higher quality cooking though. I make a beef and barley stew in mine that works great. Basically I start with my dutch oven, put it on medium-high heat on the range, throw in a 3-4 lb chuck roast and sear it brown and crispy on all sides. I take the browned roast and toss that into the crockpot on the "low" setting. Next to the hot dutch oven that is now full of oil and fond from the beef I add 1lb of coarsely sliced mushrooms (just whites are fine), toss a few pinches of salt onto them and stir once to get some oil on them then let them sit and cook until they release their liquid and shrink up some. I dump this into the crockpot on top of the roast. Next to the dutch oven I add in 2tbls of butter and 2 chopped onions and another pinch of salt. I cook this down until the onions brown up and at least start to carmelize then add 3 stalks of chopped celery. After the celery starts to soften I add 4-5 cloves of crushed garlic and cook until fragrant then 1 bottle of cheap red wine and reduce that to 1/3 of its volume. I dump all of this into the crockpot along with 1 cup of pearl barley and 2 cups of stock (chicken or whatever you have on hand works fine). Mix this, add black pepper, a couple bay leaves and thyme and let it sit for ~3-4 hours. After that I add 5-6 chopped carrots and let cook for another 2-3 hours until the meat starts coming apart easily and the carrots are soft. Then I add a handful of chopped parsley and salt / pepper to taste. The barley ends up cooking down nicely and gives the whole stew this great velvety texture and the grains soak up a lot of nice flavor on their own. You can also add a cup or so of frozen peas at the end which works well too. I add in the carrots about halfway through because putting them in early ends up with really mushy carrots that come apart when you're stirring up everything to break the beef up into chunks. It sounds like a lot of work but honestly if you chop up your mirepoix and mushrooms beforehand it's really simple and you're basically dumping one thing into the dutch oven then rapidly to the crockpot and repeating that until everything is in there then you can spend the rest of the day doing other things. I can probably get the entire thing done and in the cooker in 30-40 mins.
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# ¿ May 13, 2016 04:03 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:31 |
Virtue posted:
Not much danger in overcooking if you're doing low and slow and aren't going >10-12 hours. Honestly 8h is usually enough. Basically, just cook it until you can stick a fork in it and it starts coming apart just by pushing the fork around. If you have to cut it with a knife to break the muscle apart it's not cooked enough yet. If it comes apart with a fork its cooked enough and going past that won't get you anything except the meat becoming drier and stringier eventually. I typically do 6h on low and then check and see, usually it ends up being in the ~7h range but letting it go for 8 isn't going to be a problem for overcooking typically. 12h could be overkill but depends on the size of pot / size of shoulder etc.
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# ¿ Jul 10, 2016 14:37 |
Jose posted:salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne, tinned tomatoes, onion, garlic, fresh chillies and lime juice should be a basic enough starter if its just thighs will get you a slighty spicy tomato sauce you can reduce to mean it doesn't leak everywhere Seconded.
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# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 19:30 |
Theophany posted:I find pulled pork in a crock pot comes out wet and lovely. It doesn't take any longer or any more effort to do it in a cast iron pot in the oven and has the added bonus of not having those wet and slimy characteristics. Don't underestimate the advantage of not having an entire kitchen/ apt being heated up by the oven for hours at a stretch for some people. Also same for leaving an oven on unattended for hours. Right now during the weekdays I live in a tiny cottage house without AC, running the oven for more than an hour makes the entire place unbearable even with all the windows and doors open. Crock pots aren't some "perfect" way to cook nearly anything, but they do work well and have some practical advantages that are worth tweaking / finding recipes that work well with them. For example I would never ever make jambalya in a crock pot as the rice would always be real mushy and the whole dish takes less than 1.5h start to finish in a good dutch oven. But, I almost always make red beans for red beans and rice in one.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2016 15:15 |
Theophany posted:That's a fair point re heat. Even though my apt is small I can open windows to create a wind tunnel, so never really an issue I'd considered. Yours does't come out mushy? That's fascinating. Mind posting a recipe for it / maybe crossposting it over the cajun food thread? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3570811 I'd like to give it a try just to see how it compares to my usual method.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2016 17:53 |
Theophany posted:I kind of have to do it from memory now seeing as the page I found the original recipe on has vanished from the internet, but I do it as follows: Interesting. Thanks! I have been eating/ cooking jambalaya my entire life. Will give this a shot but I am a bit skeptical. If you fancy it, try the recipe here sometime: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3570811#post419606766 Would be interested to see how you think it compares. Biggest difference I see here is this one uses tomato, but creole vs cajun style ones often do. You can omit that and still have it be quite good. Having the paprika/cumin/ kitchen bouquet might help in that case.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2016 22:19 |
Theophany posted:Ah, now don't go comparing crock pot jambalaya to your recipe on quality alone. Bear in mind that I'm a Brit and this is the best that we can do without proper comparison to the genuine Louisiana article, but it's a hell of a lot better than the ready meal crap we get! Oh sure! I am just curious as jambalaya would seem to be something I would never even attempt to do in a crockpot because I figure it would end up more like congee or something. Even if its not as good it might be interesting to try given the occasional need for convenience / sometimes lack of access to a proper kitchen etc.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2016 22:37 |
Theophany posted:Is the whole sugar and pork shoulder thing really that good? I can't get over those recipes that say coke or dr. pepper when it comes to a ham, so putting sugar on meat just doesn't compute to me. I can't get over my hangup that sweet and savoury don't belong together. Can't speak for others but for that recipe yes. The abundant vinegar along with the sugar balance out nicely in the end and if you throw in some onions and garlic with it you can take all that out and blend it up / add some salt and any other seasonings you like and you'll have a nice BBQ sauce to toss back in with the meat.
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# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 22:37 |
Croatoan posted:Did your mother refuse to say I love you or something? I think phlux runs a food court or something
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# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 18:35 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:31 |
22 Eargesplitten posted:So what I'm getting from this is that bone-in chicken thighs will fall off the bone after slow cooking? Yes
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 19:55 |