Slow and steady: embracing the slow cooker

Slow and steady: embracing the slow cooker

In my experience, people have either never even touched a slow cooker, or are obsessed with them.

Once you’ve discovered the wonder of a slow cooker, you never look back. They’re a relatively simple addition to your kitchen that can make a massive difference to your life.

If you’ve never had one, you might think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But slow cookers are a revolution, especially if you’re trying to lead a healthier lifestyle and taking more care over your nutrition.

If you’re still not convinced, here are a few of the benefits of having one in your kitchen. After that, we’ll go into a short guide to where to start with the world of slow cooking.

The benefits

1. The flavour

If you struggle to get sensational flavours out of the dishes you whip up, then a slow cooker could be the making of your cooking skills. Slow cooking allows flavours to meld together and strengthen, giving you a level of taste it’s hard to get any other way.

2. The savings

Slow cookers are great from an economical point of view. You can use cheaper, tougher cuts of meat for slow cooker dishes, but you can also go all out with pulses, dry grains and beans, making for nutritious, meat-free but hearty meals.

3. The ease

Do you ever make a meal and find that you’ve ending up using every single pot, pan and utensil in the kitchen? Slow cookers mean you only have one thing to wash up after your meal.

As well as that, it’s easy in the sense that it’s hard to get wrong. Following a slow cooker recipe is just about throwing in all of the right ingredients and pressing a button. Easy to negotiate for even the most inexperienced cooks.

4. The versatility

When you think slow cooker, you probably think classic stews. But what a lot of people don’t know is that you can use one of these to make all kinds of dishes, from French to Asian to South American. Travel the world from the comfort of your kitchen with your slow cooker.

5. The capacity

If you ever need to cook for big groups and your oven just can’t handle the pressure, the slow cooker is a great extra to press into service for cooking big batches of vegetables or side dishes.

6. The time saving

Can’t be bothered to spend hours slaving over a hot stove? With a slow cooker, you don’t have to. Chop up the ingredients and you’re free to get on with other things whilst they stew away to themselves.

7. The fact it’s ready when you walk in the door

If you always get home from work starving and don’t have the energy or the inclination to start cooking a full meal from scratch, you can end up opting for less healthy choices, or snacking more than you should.

8. The meal prep

We’ve talked before about how beneficial meal prep can be if you’re trying to watch what you eat. If you cook up big batches then you can enjoy leftovers all week long, or freeze them and have them to hand whenever you need a quick healthy meal.

Sound good?

If you’re keen to get your hands on a slow cooker and start saving on time, money and effort, then you’ll be wondering where to start. Here’s some basic tips that will help get the ball rolling.

Top tips

1. Start simple

When you’ve got a new slow cooker it can be very exciting and tempting to jump straight in and try some complex recipes. But I find that it’s always best to start with simple recipes that require small numbers of ingredients and work up.

2. Slowly expand your repertoire

Make a deal with yourself that you’ll try at least one new recipe per week to make sure you keep expanding your repertoire, keeping things interesting and keeping your diet varied.

3. Make big batches

One of the main benefits of slow cooking is being able to make big batches, so make the most of it. Chill anything you don’t use and enjoy it for lunch the next day. Most slow cooker recipes tend to be freezer-friendly, so freeze it in portions that you can easily defrost

4. Think outside the box

Make sure you push your slow-cooking limits now and again. Slow cookers are good for so much more than just the obvious things. You can even use them to make a delicious batch of mulled wine or hot chocolate.

5. Pick the simplest recipes

The best kind of slow cooker recipes are the ones that literally only require you to chop. To make the most of the time-saving qualities of a slow cooker, avoid recipes that ask you to brown anything off before you throw it in. The simpler the better.

6. Pre-prep

The great thing about a slow cooker is that you can set it off in the morning and have it all ready and waiting for you when you get home in the evening.

But if you’re anything like me then you probably don’t want to be spending your mornings chopping up vegetables. Luckily, you don’t have to.

You can usually chop up everything you need the night before and pop it in a sealed container in the fridge until the morning. This does take a fair amount of forward planning, but the time you’ll save will be so worth it.

7. Use the low setting

Slow cooker experts tend to recommend that you use the low setting as often as you can, as it really helps to bring out the flavours.

It means you can be out all day without a care in the world, knowing there’s a tasty meal waiting for you when you get back.

8. Leave it alone

Potentially the most important rule of slow cooking is to resist the temptation to check up on how your dish is doing. Slow cookers are designed to take care of themselves, so fight the urge to get in there and stir your food.

Taking the lid off a slow cooker means that some of the heat escapes, which means it takes longer for your food to cook.

The best thing to do is just press the button and forget about it, going off to tick off the other 100 things on your to-do and coming back in time to enjoy a delicious meal.

*Are you a slow cooker convert already? We’d love to hear about your favourite recipes. Leave a comment and let us know.