I think I have had it with my slow cooker

Dela

Dela

Cathlete
OK, I love the idea of throwing a bunch of ingredients together, letting it cook all day, then voila! I have dinner. But it really stinks to wait 8 hours to find out your food is just a mushy pile of under flavored crap. So I did make one good dish, it was country style pork ribs with a home made sugar free bbq sauce and onions. The second dish, gross, some kind of creamy chicken with mushrooms, need to toss that for tomorrow's garbage pick up, then the last one was kielbasa with cabbage, I bought both regular and turkey kielbasa to cut the calories a bit, but the turkey kielbasa is not good, so the regular kielbasa is good, but the cabbage is just a disgusting mess, bad color, too mushy.

What do people make in a slow cooker that tastes good??? Maybe the way this cooks just doesn't lend itself to my taste in food. I think I have one more try in me, then it's off to the basement for that cooker!
 
I mostly use the slow cooker for soups, chilis, and sauces that benefit from simmering long periods of time.

My mom used to make pot roasts with cut up potatoes and carrots in the slow cooker. She has also used it to slow cook a pork loin that she later shreds for pulled pork sandwiches.
 
I've made good chili, a pot roast, french onion soup...all kinds of things really. I haven't used my slow cooker in ages but I always remember it producing some pretty tastey stuff! I've even made spaghetti sauce in it! Do you have a slow cooker recipe book? The one I have is where I got my recipes from. All except for the sauce. I can't recall the name but if you are interested I can look when I get home!
 
I'd be interested in some good ideas. I mainly use my slow cooker for making shredded beef or pork out of roasts. After the meat is cooked enough to remove the fat and bones (if any), you can add barbeque sauce, onion soup mix or other stuff and continue to cook until the meat is tender. My Mother-In-Law shared a great recipe for CafeRio pork that I do in a slow cooker:

Sweet Cafe Rio Pork
6 lb. pork (or a smaller pork roast)
1 (16 oz.) bottle salsa
1 can Coke (not diet)
2 C brown sugar (I used 1 C and thought it was PLENTY sweet)
Place pork in crock pot and fill 1/2 way up with water. Cook on HIGH for 5 hours. (My unit cooks too hot on High, so I cooked it on LOW). Drain off water. Clean fat off of pork and shred with forks. Mix together sauce ingredients and put on top of pork. Return to crock pot. Cook an additional 3 hours on HIGH (again, I used LOW). Leave on LOW (Keep Warm in my case), until ready to serve.

My family absolutely loved this recipe--and it's rare that all my kids like the same thing. I avoid pork, and I don't like all the sugar in this recipe, but it tasted good when I tried it. I think chicken cooked with salsa in the crock pot would be yummy. I was going to try that--thanks for the reminder.

Oh, and turkey breast (bone-in or boneless) turns out fantastic in the slow cooker--if you have one big enough.
 
OK, I think the next attempt will be a chili, this seems like it makes sense for a crock pot. Although the turkey breast sound interesting as well, so if the chili works out, I'll proceed to turkey breast :).

I have a low carb crockpot cookbook that produced the 2 yucky recipes, the pork ribs, was pieced together with online recipes. I also have a cookbook that came with the crock pot, I'll have to go through that one again.
 
I find that with my slow cooker, I need to keep the food in for less time than 8 hours. I think part of my problem is I don't use enough food for the large cooker that I have.

I will cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6. This is not good for days I will be gone all day. So, I will try to put in larger amounts of food. I should just get a smaller cooker.

I usually make what everyone else said, roasts, pulled pork, stew.

Melissa
 
I love my slowcooker!

Actually I have 3 and love all of them!! I have dinner in it right now. I make very simple things mostly and almost always cook boneless skinless chicken breasts in it. Today I threw in 2 diced raw chicken breasts and some italian seasonings and tomatoe paste, mixed with water. I needed to use it up, I had used a Tblspoon for another recipe. Tonight I will boil spagetti, add some more seasonings if necessary and serve my son and husband spagetti! The easiest ever is to throw in chicken breasts with salsa and then shred the meat, my family loves this on tortilla chips with shredded cheese. I throw the shredded chicken in wraps, add it to pasta dishes for extra protein anything really! I also make the traditional chilli with ground turkey. Lately I've been marinating cut up chicken breasts for fajitas (lime juice, chili powder, evoo, etc.) and throwing it in the crockpot on low for a couple hours instead of grilling it or sauteing it. It works out great! Check out this website..

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
 
Nicole_29 said:
Actually I have 3 and love all of them!! I have dinner in it right now. I make very simple things mostly and almost always cook boneless skinless chicken breasts in it. Today I threw in 2 diced raw chicken breasts and some italian seasonings and tomatoe paste, mixed with water. I needed to use it up, I had used a Tblspoon for another recipe. Tonight I will boil spagetti, add some more seasonings if necessary and serve my son and husband spagetti! The easiest ever is to throw in chicken breasts with salsa and then shred the meat, my family loves this on tortilla chips with shredded cheese. I throw the shredded chicken in wraps, add it to pasta dishes for extra protein anything really! I also make the traditional chilli with ground turkey. Lately I've been marinating cut up chicken breasts for fajitas (lime juice, chili powder, evoo, etc.) and throwing it in the crockpot on low for a couple hours instead of grilling it or sauteing it. It works out great! Check out this website..

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link! Looking now.
 
I LOVE MY SLOW COOKER

I wouldn't have any home cooked food if it wasn't for my slow cooker. Besides from the essential steel cut oats/sweet rice combo I make in it once a week, I use it to make all of my meals for the week. I use the Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook and almost all of the slow cooker cookbooks from Judith Finlayson (LOVE her recipes). I also use her non-vegetarian cookbooks and substitute my vegan alternatives. I <3 my slow cookers so much I would die without them!! :)
 
Don't forget that the crockpot was "invented" to cook beans. Dried beans are one of the cheapest, most nutritious things you can buy at the grocery store. I do my beans in the pressure cooker, another amazing appliance, but it would be worth a try to do dry beans.
 
The manufacturers had to change the heating system to something higher than before because of the scare of bacteria development. Today's slow cocker cook hotter than the ones from 15 years or longer ago. Most recipes, however, are not adjusted to the higher cooking temperature and that is why they result in mush. Try cutting down the cooking time and check the internal temperature manually before eating the food.
 
Some interesting info in here, I am definitely going to reduce the cook time on the next try. I am still leaning towards chili, need to find an all meat one, but want to add in some veggies, maybe mushrooms for bulk, I'm currently eating lower carb and beans are too high if it's something I am going to eat a few days during the week. Thanks again for all the tips.
 
I second crockpot365.blogspot.com. I have probably made half the recipes on that site and almost all of them have been fantastic.

The only thing that seems to not work for me is making pasta in the crockpot, but I literally use it 2-3 times per week and it cranks out great meals with minimal effort.

I can't even remember what I did for food before I got a crockpot.
 
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