By Sarah Cook
Slow cookers are the ideal kitchen gadget for both time-poor and budget-conscious home cooks. How do you get the most from yours?
For lovers of low maintenance cooking, the ability to leave a gadget to cook the dinner while you go about your day is the ultimate win. Plus, slow cookers are simple and user-friendly, usually requiring no more set up than plugging it in. They score highly on energy efficiency too.
Coupled with the capacity to batch cook, comparatively small purchase cost and low and slow cooking method suited to wallet-friendly cuts of meat, a slow cooker can be a big money-saver in your kitchen.
How do they work?
A slow cooker simmers food at low temperatures over a few hours. Most models offer a high and low setting, but as the phrase goes, less is usually more. The difference between the two settings isn’t a higher temperature – it’s just the time it takes for the slow cooker to reach the simmer point. Most dishes benefit from the slowest, gentlest heat to bring out the best flavours from the ingredients.
This is also good news on a nutrition front. As with all cooking methods, some nutrients will be broken down, but the gentle heat doesn’t destroy as many nutrients as roasting or boiling. In most cases the resulting sauce is served as part of the meal, so the nutrients will be retained.
Slow cookers are designed to be left alone. In fact, every time you lift the lid you will release some of the heat, adding around 15-20 minutes extra to the total cooking time. In general, slow cooker recipes are very forgiving, and particularly when cooking on ‘low’, going an hour or two over the suggested cook time is unlikely to affect the finished dish.
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To brown or not to brown?
People tend to gravitate towards easy slow cooker recipes where most, if not all, of the ingredients are thrown into the pot at the start with minimum prep. Which brings us to the "browning meat" question.
Very few recipes will end up being a disaster if you choose not to fry the meat and (some) vegetables beforehand, the only real exception being minced meat. Browning meat caramelises the outside which adds colour and an extra layer of flavour. Similarly, caramelised onions are always going to taste better than raw onions. (And if you’re cooking them for a short time on a high setting, raw onions may retain a little bit of crunch.) But because the finished dishes are cooked for so long, they are always going to be flavourful, so scale your prep up or down to suit yourself.
If you are short of time in the mornings, just prepare everything you need for the meal the night before. Savvy cooks will even pack it into the slow cooker pot and store it in the fridge overnight. (However, don’t preheat your slow cooker if doing it this way, and try to bring your dish out of the fridge to come closer to room temperature. There is a risk of cracking the inside pot.)
Our favourite slow cooker hacks
To save on an extra pot (and washing up), try mixing dried pasta into the sauce when you’re about 20 minutes from eating.
To intensify flavour in drier dishes like pulled pork, and to avoid soggy bakes, wrap the underside of your lid in a clean tea towel to absorb some of that water before it drips back in.
Chicken and browned mince of any kind takes less time in a slow cooker, so place them on top of the vegetables when packing the slow cooker, further from the heat source, so they’ll cook more slowly. Reverse these layers with tougher cuts or large joints of meat, beef cheek or oxtail.
No matter the size, fill your pot no more than three-quarters full. Half to two-thirds is ideal for even cooking and avoiding spillages.
Add dairy items like milk, cream and cheese during the last hour to prevent curdling, and soft vegetables such as mushrooms, courgette and leafy greens during the last 45 minutes of cooking time.
No amount of pre-frying will result in crispy chicken skin. Either remove the skin, as in this slow cooker chicken pho. Or give the skin some colour with a brush of oil and some paprika, as in this slow cooker roast chicken and accept a more tender skin.
Cut ingredients into similar-sized pieces so they cook evenly. This is particularly important with veg to avoid mush at the end.
Boil dried beans for 10 minutes before, draining and then adding to a slow cooker. Some, like kidney beans, contain toxins that are only killed at high temperatures.
Use easy-cook rice and rinse it thoroughly before you add it to the pot. It’ll take 2-3 hours on ‘high’ and the rice to liquid ratio should be 1:2. If using brown rice you might require a splash more.
Instead of faffing about with flour, if your stew is ready early, remove the lid for an hour or two to intensify the sauce.
Hot chocolate sauce? Use your slow cooker as a double boiler. Just add chocolate to a heavy jar, fill the slow cooker with water halfway up the sides of the jar, and keep chocolate consistently melted for a couple of hours (you can even make candles this way!)
Do even less work and let the cooker wash itself. Half-fill with water plus half a cup of vinegar and 3-4 tbsp bicarbonate of soda, then switch on 'low' for 1-4 hours.
Saving money with a slow cooker
While the slow cooker will be on for longer than if you cooked in an electric oven, that doesn’t mean you’ll be spending more on electricity as they use far less energy.
In addition, slow cookers are suited to both cheaper cuts of meat and cheaper varieties of vegetables. By using budget-friendly cuts that are tougher or have a higher fat content, like chicken thighs, pork shoulder, lamb neck and beef shin, you don’t run the risk of the meat drying out during cooking. Leaner, and therefore more expensive, cuts are best saved for quick-cooking techniques like roasting or frying. The same rule can be applied to your veg. Hard, good-value roots like carrots, shallots, celeriac, swede and beets don’t easily overcook, and in fact often take on more flavour of the sauce.
Where less is more when it comes to heat levels, the same can be said of flavour-making ingredients. Because the lid stays on, nothing really evaporates and therefore none of the flavours are lost either. Two glasses of wine can become one, because you’ll taste much more of the wine in a slow cooker dish than you would in a stove-top dish.
Adapting recipes for year-round easy cooking
Slow cookers are associated with hearty winter dishes, as slow cooker search trends show. However, don’t banish your cooker to the loft at the first sign of spring!
Slow cookers are well-insulated, so they won’t heat up your kitchen in the summer, and you can cook a huge variety of recipes in them. From year-round family dinners like slow cooker risotto and bolognese sauce, to sociable party foods like shredded chicken shawarma, pulled pork and ribs.
And they aren’t just for savoury dishes. While your oven is taken up with the Sunday roast (though you can slow-cook roast beef), try a spongey sticky toffee or rice pudding. You can even bake a loaf of bread in them. That said, as versatile as a slow cooker can be, it’s not just as easy as whisking up your standard Victoria sponge mix and pouring it in. Cakes and baked goods require specially-adjusted slow cooker recipes.
More traditional stews, curries, casseroles and soups are easily adapted. Just reduce the amount of liquid by a third to half, and don’t be fearful if once all of the ingredients are added, everything isn’t submerged. Meat and vegetables give off liquid of their own during the cooking process and will contribute to the overall amount. Keep the flavouring levels the same, the herbs, spices, stock cubes and pastes, just limit the liquid.
Sauces in the slow cooker will not thicken as they would using conventional cooking methods which involve evaporation, so try tossing meat in a few tablespoons of plain flour at the start, or using a little cornflour mixed to a paste with a ladle of the sauce towards the end of the cooking time. This can then be stirred back through the pot to thicken the whole dish.
Enjoy your slow cooker all year round for that warm feeling of an easy, delicious, and budget-friendly dinner waiting for you at home.
First published March 2022
