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Slow cookers are also great for cooking dried beans, which taste better and are cheaper than canned. Just add beans, water to ~5 cm above level of beans, anything you want to flavour the beans (bay leaves, onion, etc.) and salt. Cook on low until tender - I usually do it overnight. Remember if you're cooking kidney beans they must be boiled at a rolling boil for at least ten minutes before going in the slow cooker (change the water after the boil) or you'll get sick. Then you can use them however you'd use canned beans, and freeze any leftovers in their liquid for later use. I like to make apple butter in the fall - just fill the slow cooker full of peeled, sliced apples, plus a little liquid and a little sugar, and cook down until you have delicious apple butter. I've also made chicken in milk in the slow cooker and it's pretty good, although not as good as the version in the oven because the liquid doesn't reduce as much. For me, the main advantage of a slow cooker is that I work on call, which means I often get called out in the middle of, say, waiting for supper to finish in the oven. With a slow cooker, that's not a problem - it's on a timer and will switch to the "keep warm" setting for 12 hours afterwards, which is usually enough time for me to deliver a baby and come back. And then I come home to beef stew or chicken soup or chili or whatever and life is pretty nice. Brown all your meats and veggies before they go in the pot, then use your braising liquid to deglaze the browning pan before you add it. Reduce the amount of liquid you add by about half when adapting a recipe because it won't evaporate and concentrate the flavour on its own. Choose cuts of meat that benefit from braising - tough cuts full of connective tissue are best. If there's lots of fat on the meat, add even less liquid because the meat will cook in its own liquified fat.
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Jul 13, 2016 03:47
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 21:52 |
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