Slow Cookers For Dummies

Tom Lacalamita, Glenna Vance

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764552403
• eBook ISBN: 9781118053591
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Culinary Arts

The secret is out: That slow cooker that's been collecting dust in your kitchen cabinet is a wonderful and easy tool for making delicious entrees at the touch of a button. With new U.S. sales estimated at 6 million a year, more people are finding slow cookers indispensable in getting a home-cooked meal on the table. Besides tasting good, slow cooked meals are convenient and nutritious because you use fresh, wholesome ingredients.

Slow Cookers For Dummies is for working families, couples, single people, students, and anyone who is tired of takeout. Perhaps you love cooking but have little time to do it or want to decrease your reliance on prepared mixes or boxed convenience foods. Slow cooking may be right for you if you want to

• Save money on food and utility bills
• Control your sodium and fat intake
• Free up your oven and cooktop for more holiday cooking
• Take a hot dish to a potluck supper

If you already know how to use a slow cooker, the delicious recipes in this book can help you expand your repertoire beyond soups and stews. If you're thinking of getting a slow cooker, Slow Cookers For Dummies takes you from the basics of how these cookers work to preparing special occasion meals, to troubleshooting slow cooker problems.

Here's a closer look at what Slow Cookers For Dummies includes:

• Guidelines on how to choose the right slow cooker for you
• Techniques to help you slow-cook the right way
• Easy recipes for snacks, beverages, chili, stews, and casseroles
• Scrumptious recipes for roasting beef, pork, lamb, and poultry
• How-to's on cooking and freezing in batches
• Ways to adapt favorite traditionally cooked dishes for the slow cooker

In Slow Cookers for Dummies, food and appliance cooking experts Tom Lacalamita and Glenna Vance show that this classic cooking appliance is really a wonderful tool for making creative, delicious meals. With 75 recipes for making the most out of your slow cooker, you'll never put that slow cooker in your cabinet again.

Part I

Revving Up Your Slow Cooker

In this part...

**IN a DROPCAP**

We’re going to tell you exactly what slow cookers are, who’s using them, and why — as well as how they differ from other familiar cooking methods. We fill you in on how the slow cooker has changed over the past 30 years and what innovations you can expect to find in terms of new sizes, features, and configurations.

Chapter 1

Slow Cooking in the Fast Lane

In This Chapter

Comparing slow food to fast food

Defining who uses slow cookers

Discussing slow cooking benefits

Recipes in This Chapter

Quick and Easy Turkey Vegetable Soup

I t’s 5:55 p.m. and there you are — sitting in stalled traffic for the third night in a row. Work was a bear and your boss was beyond belief. The kids must have called you at least a half-dozen times since they got home from school, bellyaching that there was nothing good in the house to eat and asking you when you’re going to be home. And just as you realize that the inspection sticker on your car expired last week, that nice police officer driving alongside of you asks that you pull over at the next intersection. So you’re having a bad day.

But at least you did one thing right. You had the foresight to set up your slow cooker with a fantastic leg of lamb with roasted potatoes 20 minutes before heading out for work this morning. After the type of day you had, the last thing you want to worry about is what to make for dinner. Although slow cookers may not solve all your problems, they can at least make things a little more bearable!

The Hare and the Tortoise: Fast Food versus Slow Food

What we eat helps define us as a people, and sometimes how food is cooked defines us as a society and culture. Based on many Americans’ preference for meals from drive-through windows, fast food establishments appear to have become surrogate mothers, at least when mealtime rolls around. Approximately 47 cents of every dollar spent on food in this country is spent on restaurant meals, with fast food restaurants outperforming full-service establishments. The reasons are simple to understand. For the most part, fast food tastes good.

Fast food is usually consistently prepared and provides good value for the dollar when all other issues are cast aside. Great for providing instant gratification for our tummies, fast food restaurants usually are nonthreatening, clean, and air-conditioned and have become the sanctums of our inner cities and the refuge of travelers the world over. Nowhere else can you be served a meal in two minutes or less at such an affordable price. Fast foods appeal to both young families and the retired, and many a baby’s first solid food has been the humble French fry!

Nevertheless, we all know that reliance on a fast food diet leads to health concerns such as obesity and heart disease. Most people are aware that sitting down to a home-cooked, well-balanced meal is preferable to wolfing down a high-fat meal of little nutritional value and fiber, along with a sugary, carbonated drink, while driving to an appointment or working at our desks. Eating on the run, we lose track of how much we’ve eaten and tend to fall prey to impulse eating. Recent studies reveal that over 50 percent of the American population is overweight, with fast food and lack of exercise the main culprits. When it comes to fast food, moderation is the key word.

But because of these health concerns and a desire to maintain the traditions of old, 83 percent of all households still make an effort to get dinner on the table at least five nights a week, even though since 1969 we have on average 22 fewer hours a week to spend with our family because of professional and personal commitments. How we prepare dinner at home has undoubtedly changed, with such conveniences as salad in a bag, frozen heat-and-serve pizzas, and supermarket rotisserie chicken now available. Nevertheless, when given the opportunity, what we’re doing can still be defined as preparing and cooking dinner.

Since its introduction in 1971, the slow cooker has been a way for Americans to get a home-cooked meal on the table. It is in the act of preparing dinner that the slow cooker excels. You can prepare the foods at your convenience — even the night before — and layer them in the slow cooker, refrigerate the food overnight, set the slow cooker on low the next morning, and leave for work, trusting in complete faith that you will have a tasty, home-prepared meal, cooked to perfection, waiting for you when you return. All that’s left for you to do is set the table, get a salad together if you want (using the aforementioned salad in a bag), and pour the drinks.

Slow cooked meals are convenient and nutritious — in that they use fresh, wholesome ingredients — and taste good. In many cases, you can easily adapt your favorite traditional-cooked dishes so you can make them in the slow cooker. In Chapter 5, we discuss various techniques you can use in making these adaptations. We also provide you with some of our favorite “before” and “after” (read “traditional” transformed to “slow cooker”) recipes to help you see how it’s done.

Snail crossing: The international slow food movement

While we are, perhaps, too familiar with fast food, a relatively new phenomena is slow food, a new twist on an old lifestyle: You eat what is produced locally and is part of the local fabric. In fact, in 1986 an organization dedicated to slow food was founded in Italy. With 60,000 members in 35 countries, the International Slow Food Movement (www.slowfood.com) seeks to preserve and promote local food traditions, while at the same time limiting the globalization and standardization of food and drink.

The symbol of the movement is appropriately the snail, a traditional emblem of slowness. Although not denying the need for advancement, “slow foodees” want to savor the taste of each morsel as it was intended to look and taste. For example, we all know that with the right formula, your favorite brand of cola can be made almost anywhere in the world and taste the same no matter where you drink it. On the other hand, factory-made Parmesan cheese, sold in the cardboard shaker containers, tastes nothing like artisan-made Parmesan cheese from Italy — made from the milk of grass-grazing cows and aged following century-long traditions.

Here’s Who’s Slow Cooking

People never cease to envy people in the cooking profession. It’s not that they’re rich or better looking, or live in fancy houses and drive expensive cars. It’s because they know how to cook and enjoy it. Because professional cooks work with food, most people naturally assume that their pantries and fridges are stocked with endless goodies and wonderful things to eat. We, the authors of this book, want to set the record straight on that score!

Usually we, as members of the culinary profession, do have plenty around to eat, but sometimes we too fall short — especially when life is getting the best of us and the last thing we want or have time to do is plan and prepare a delectable meal. Many a day, dinnertime rolls around, and regrettably, we haven’t even thought about feeding our families. That’s when we shake our heads and wish we had been better organized and had thought to put a meal in the slow cooker earlier in the day. Planning ahead is so much easier than racking your brain and wringing your hands when time is short and bellies are empty.

Many culinary professionals besides us also use slow cookers, as attested to by Julia Child in her recent cookbook, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1999). In the section on cooking beans, Julia claims that her favorite way to cook beans is overnight in a slow cooker with water and seasonings until the beans are done the next morning. That has become ou...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Revving Up Your Slow Cooker
• Chapter 1: Slow Cooking in the Fast Lane
• Chapter 2: From the Fire to the Pot
• Part II : Making the Best and Safest Use of Your Slow Cooker
• Chapter 3: Slow Cooker Basics from Start to Finish
• Chapter 4: Food Safety 101
• Chapter 5: From the Stove to the Slow Cooker
• Part III : Basic and Delicious Recipes for the Slow Cooker
• Chapter 6: Snacks, Dips, and Beverages
• Chapter 7: Spoonfuls of Goodness: Soups, Chowders, and Chili
• Chapter 8: Slow Simmering Stews
• Chapter 9: The Big Cuts: Roasts
• Chapter 10: Casseroles
• Chapter 11: Desserts and Jams
• Part IV : Jump-Starting Dinner with Your Slow Cooker
• Chapter 12: Cooking with a Master Meat Sauce
• Chapter 13: Master Roast Turkey Breast Recipes
• Chapter 14: New York Penicillin: Master Chicken Broth Recipes
• Part V : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 15: Ten Special Occasions for Slow Cooker Entrées
• Chapter 16: Ten Problems and How to Handle Them
• Chapter 17: Ten Web Sites to Check Out
• Chapter 18: Ten Tips for Great Slow Cooking
• Appendix A: Contact Information for Slow Cooker Manufacturers
• Appendix B: Metric Conversion Guide